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VIDENGES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



ARTHUR T. PI. , D.D., 



I 



: jflcnuno 1l'>« IflcvcH : : 



"Many Infallible Proofs:" 



THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 



THE WRITTEN AND LIVING WORD OF GOD, 



BY . 



ARTHUR T.^PIERSON. D. D., 

Bethany Pi'esbyierian Chttrch, Philadelphia, 



' The writing which is in the King's name and sealed with the 
King's ring, may no man reverse." — Esther viii: 8. 



FLEMING H. REVELL, 

NEW YORK- I CHICAGO: 

12 Bible House, Asi or Place. | 148 and 150 Madison Street. 

Publisher of Evangelical Literature, 



6T M^i 

.P53 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by 

FLEMING H. REVELL, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



By Bxchanirfi 
Army, and N^vv Olub 



To 

Charles Buncher. Esq., 

of Detroit, Mich.., 

to whose 

intelligent sympathy, unselfish friendship, 

and appreciative hearing, much, oi 

the inspiration of my best 

efforts, "both, witr. 

tongue and 

pen are 

due, 

I most gratefully inscribe 

th-is volume. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

Chapter I. 
WEIGHING THE PROOFS. 



Proof not Assumption, 
Truth can be Proved. 
Honest Doubters. 
Search develops Belief. 
Error fears Light. 
Human Sponges. 



Belief develops Service. 
Present-Day Miracles. 
Science confirms Revelation. 
Strict Accuracy Essential. 
Study free from Bias. 
A triumph of Brain and Tongue 
Pages 9 — 26. 



Part I. — ''The Volume of the Book." 

Chapter IL 
the prophetic seal. 



External Proofs. 
Prophecy and Providence. 
Miracle and Prophecy. 
Prophetic Credentials. 
Prophecy a Lock. 
History the Key. 



Tests of True Prophecy. 
A Colossal Wheel. 
A Bold Claim. 
Heathen Oracles. 
" Mother Shipton." 
A Storm ! Prepare ! 

Pages 29-47. 

Chapter III. ^ 

THE RUIN OF JERUSALE.M. ^ 



Daniel— Historian or Prophet? 
Voltaire's Last Moments. 
The Gospels Vindicated. 
Dates of the Gospels. 
Prophecy not impugned for 300 

years. 
An Important Argument. 
A Wonderful Fulfilment. 
The Jewish People. 



Predicted Features 

Vain attempt to erect a new 

Temple. 
Enforced testimony of enemies. 
Gentile Profanation. 
The Finger of God. 
The Nation's Retribution. 
Negation vei'stis Proof. 

Pages 48— 78. 



Chapter IV. 



MIRACLES. 



What is a Miracle? 
The Savage and the Engine. 
Miracles not Unreasonable. 
Miracles agree with Nature 
An Illustration. 
Possible and Probable. 
Astronomical Discoveries 
God's Credentials. 



The Strasburg Clock. 
The Plan of Attack. 
Are Miracles Credible? 
Christ's unchallengable miracles 
Hostile Acknowledgment. 
''Contrary to Experience." 
" Search the Scriptures." 

Pages 79—108. 



Chapter V. 
SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE 



The Bible needs no Patronage. 
Its Moral Object. 
Astronomy. 



The Firmament. 
Geological Support. 
Theories of the Deluge. 

Pages 109 — 126. 



Chapter VI. 

SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 

Modern Discoveries. 
Ethnological Researches. 
A Unitarian's Verdict. 

Pages 127 — 144. 

Chapter VII. 



Heathen Fallacies. 
Vibrations of Light. 
Solomon's Accuracy. 



THE MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE. 



Its Unity. 

A Test Case. 

The Hidden Hand. 



Clear and Intelligible. 
The Marks of Divine Origin. 
The Peaks of Mont Blanc. 
Pag^s 145 — .62. 

Chapter VIII. 



THE MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 



A Moral Test. 
Nineveh's Testimony. 
Cromwell's Portrait. 



The Golden Rule. 
The Oyster Boy. 
Practical effect of the Bible. 
Pages 163 — 182. 



Part II. — Tin: Divine Person. 

Chapter IX. 
CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



Historic and prophetic harmony 
How Apostles used Prophecy. 
Christ and the Poor 
Vicarious Atonement. 
Indirect Prophecy. 

Chapter X. 
THE PERSON OF CHRIST 
His Representative Humanity. 
His Purity. 
His Greatness of Soul. 



The *' Forsaken" One. 
The Scarlet Thread. 
Messianic Paradoxes. 
Unfair Criticisms. 

Pages 185 — 214. 



The Crown and the Cross. 
The Pivot of World's History. 
No Middle Ground. 

Pages 215—233. 
Chapter XL 
THE MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 



A Unique Cha'-acter. 

Pagan Incarnations. 

A Simple Criterion. 

A Dissolving View. 

The Mystery of the Trinity 



CHRIST, 

" It is so !" 

" One having Authority." 
Christ's Independence. 
W^onderful as a Teacher. 
A Treasury of Knowledge. 



A Grand Argument. 
A Perfect Scheme. 
No Useless Miracles. 
" My Mother's Hand." 

Pages 234 — 264. 

Chapter XII. 
FHE TEACHER FROM GOD. 
The Word of a King. 
The Law of Love. 
The Mystery Solved. 
Socrates* Dream. 

Pages 265 — 282. 



Chapter XIII. 
THE ORIGINALITY OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 



The Consuming Fire. 

An Idea of Christian Growth. 

The use of Affliction. 



Glory in Tribulation. 
The Good Samaritan. 
The Power of Lcve. 

Pa^es 283 — 296, 

Chapter XIV. 
THE POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING 



Power versus Knowledge. 

The Two-Edged Sword. 

Its Effect. 

Suited to all needs. 

Its Sublime Philosophy. 



Its Practical Power. 
The Force of Persuasion. 
Dead, yet Speaketh. 
And Liveth Forevermore. 

Pages 2(^1 317. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



A WORD PRELIMINARY. 



The writer of these pages once found himself getting 
into the deep darkness of doubt. Beginning at the 
foundation, he searched for himself, till he found 
the proofs ample — that the Bible is the Book of 
God ; and Christ the Son of God. It was like 
finding one's way out of a dense wood into the full 
light of day. 

Others are still in the dark ; and these chapters 
are the *' blazed" trees that mark the path by which 
one man got out of the forest. Perhaps some one 
else may try the same route, with a like result. 

ARTHUR T. PIERSON. 



CHAPTER L 



WEIGHING THE PROOFS. 



The importance of the study of the Evidences 
of Christianity, which estabhsh the claim of the 
ReHgion of Christ, as the one and only Divine 
Religion, cannot well be overrated, or overstated. 

All knowledge is good, desirable in itself and 
desirable for the sake of the power which it adds 
to character; but especially is knowledge neces- 
sary, when it helps either to create or to confirm 
our faith in the great truths of our holy religion. 
The teachings of the Bible are at once so peculiar 
and so important, that it is one of our first duties 
and privileges to attain a certainty of conviction 
as to the divine origin of the Holy Scriptures, 
and the divine character and mission of Jesus 
Christ. 

Such certainty ought to be attainable. If any 
human ruler should address to his subjects the 
most ordinary proclamation, touching their duties 
as citizens, those subjects have a right to claim 
good plain proofs that whoever may have written 
or composed that proclamation, it is by the King's 
authority, and that he is its proper author. No 
subject should be satisfied unless the grand royal 
signature and seal are found upon the decree; 
otherwise it might prove the device of some 
traitor or enemy to mislead and betray subjects, 
and even to overturn lawful rule. 



10 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

If therefore God has given to mankind a reve- 
lation of His will upon matters of the first mo- 
ment, there can be no doubt that it is in some 
plain, unmistakable way marked by His hand: 
it has on its very face God's signature and seal: 
there are many infallible proofs to satisfy honest 
doubt. 

We need not fear to take strong ground and 
it is especially necessary in these days. Principal 
Fairburn, in an address at the Union Theological 
Seminary, remarked that an entire change has 
become necessary in conducting the defence of 
Christianity, owing to the change of ground on 
the part of its enemies. The Deism of the last 
Century conceded much, in admitting the claims 
of natural religion. Now everything is denied, 
and everything must be proved. But allowing 
this to be so, everything true must be capable of 
proof. God could not ask of us anything which 
is not right and reasonable; and it would be 
neither reasonable nor right to ask us to take it 
for granted that the Bible is God's own Book, 
simply because it says so, or somebody says so, 
or even because any number of people honestly 
believe it. God himself gave us reasoning powers 
to weigh evidence with, and he means that we 
shall test truth and falsehood, proving all things 
and holding fast the good. 

There is a kind of doubt that is entirely right, 
and of that sort is the doubt of one who does not 
believe what he has no reason to believe, and 
what he has no proof of, as true. The mind is 
endowed with powers of investigation, reflection, 
reason, that we may carefully examine into evi- 
dence and so decide what is true and what is 



WEIGHING THE PROOFS. 11 

false. He speaks to our reason, who gave us our 
reason. He appeals to it even in his own Word. 
He bids us be ready always to give an answer to 
every one that asketh us a reason for the hope 
that is in us. Such an answer implies knowledge. 

God himself, then, asks of us no blind faith. 
We should know what we believe and why we 
believe it. Nothing is to be accepted unless 
based on good evidence; to believe hastily may be 
to blindly embrace error and untruth. Equally 
certain is it, inasmuch as God gives the Bible for 
the guidance of all men, that the proofs that this 
is his Word will neither be hard to find nor hard to 
see; they will be plain, like the signature and seal 
on the royal proclamation, to be found and under- 
stood by the common average man. 

This is a day of doubt. Scepticism is more 
than ever widespread. It is in our books, in the 
conversation of our friends, in the very air that 
we breathe. It is finding its way quietly into 
the very churches of Christ. We must be on our 
guard. 

I. These proofs, if they are candidly ex- 
amined, will cure all honest doubt. Much scep- 
ticism is born of an evil heart of unbelief, that de- 
parts from God on account of a perverse and 
wicked will opposed to God. Such doubts no 
amount of evidence will remove unless the heart 
is changed; such doubters would not be persuaded 
though one rose from the dead. 

But all honest doubt will yield before the 
proofs of a fact or a truth; and so there is no 
excuse for doubting, where we have the means of 
knowing. It is wrong to be willingly ignorant. 
Whatever doubts then do not spring from a 



12 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

wicked heart and unwillingness to be convinced, 
will disappear when the proofs are seen and ex- 
amined. 

There have been many candid doubters, but 
never one who had carefully studied the Evi- 
dences of Christianity. Mr. Hume confessed 
himself the prince of sceptics, as Voltaire was the 
prince of scoffers, and dark indeed were those 
depths of doubt into which his speculations 
plunged him. He said of those speculations: 
''They have so wrought upon me and heated my 
brain that I am ready to reject all belief and reas- 
oning, and can look upon no opinion even as 
more probable or likely than another." And yet, 
though pretending to great diligence in the 
search after truth, and using all his fine powers 
and culture to destroy faith in the Gospel, he 
confessed, as Dr. Johnson tells us, that he had 
never read even the New Testament with atten- 
tion. 

Whenever an honest doubter comes to me, I 
feel perfectly safe in calmly saying, to his face, 
''you have never studied the evidences, and it is 
likely never attentively examined the Bible." 
And that arrow never misses its mark. 

Some five years since, I was brought into 
contact with a man, who took pride in his scept- 
ical opinions and made a boast of not being mis- 
led by the credulity of Christians. I ventured to 
take the old arrow out of my quiver. I said, "you 
have never thoroughly studied the Bible, sir." 
He turned my arrow aside, saying very positively, 
"you are mistaken there; for I have been familiar 
with the Bible from my boyhood." And yet 
within ten minutes he had shown that he did not 



WEIGHING THE PROOFS. 13 

know the difiference between Job and Lot, but 
thought it was Job that lived in Sodom and dwelt 
with his two daughters in the cave! 

If there is one candid doubter living who has 
faithfully studied the Bible and the Evidences of 
Christianity, he has not yet been found. Before 
this course of argument is concluded, your atten- 
tion will be called to two prominent Englishmen 
who agreed to assault Christianity; but in order 
to conduct the assault the more successfully and 
skilfully, they agreed also first to examine it 
thoroughly; but when they began honestly to 
search the scriptures, they could no longer doubt 
that the Bible was the Word of God, and so Gil- 
bert West and Lord Lyttleton became converts 
and defenders of that same faith they were about 
to attack. 

II. A careful study of the evidences makes 
intelligent and steadfast believers. 

A faith not firmly founded upon good evi- 
dence deserves not the name of faith, for the 
basis of all true faith or trust is belief which is the 
assent of the mind, or understanding, to truth sup- 
ported by adequate proofs. Some things we 
believe on the evidences of the senses; other 
things, on the testimony of others; and yet other 
things, on the evidence of reason; in each case 
there is, at the bottom of belief, some form of evi- 
dence or proof. To seek to make broader and 
firmer the basis of knowledge upon which our 
faith rests, is to show respect for our own power 
to know, and respect for the Creator who honored 
us by conferring such noble powers. 

If He had intended us to be mere sponges to 
be put a-soak by our parents or teachers in some 



14 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

sort of tub, full of their notions of truth and duty, 
till we should take up all we could hold, He 
would have made us into sponges. But He did 
mean that we should have some better reason for 
our faith and hope than the fact that our parents 
had just such before us, and so He made us inde- 
pendent, reasoning beings, who naturally ask 
why a thing is so, and whether what we have 
been taught, is true. 

We must not even be content to believe blind- 
ly, for blind belief makes bigots, that hold fast to 
their way of thinking, whether wrong or right, 
and will not bear with any who differ. All per- 
secutions come in part from blind belief, some- 
times of error, and sometimes of truth. Hence, 
to believe blindly makes us liable to believe 
wrongly, and so to prolong the reign of error. 
How many honest Mohammedans would there 
be, if every Mussulman should first take pains to 
find out whether there be any good grounds for 
being a follower of the false prophet? How many 
honest Romanists, if every man and woman, 
brought up in the Romish communion, should 
take time and trouble to examine all those ques- 
tions which have to do with doctrine and practice? 
Error is always afraid of the light. Hence, the 
people are forbidden to read books that expose 
the errors of these false or corrupt religions, and 
especially is it esteemed a crime to read the Bible. 
The consequence of searching the Scriptures 
would be the ruin of false faiths. 

You call yourself a Protestant; do you know 
any good reason why? Are you such because 
you were brought up to be, and is that all the 
answer you have to give for your faith and hope? 



WEIGHING THE PROOFS. 15 

Then I do not see how you can be sure you are 
not as wrong and as mistaken as any Mohammed- 
an or pagan or papist whom you condemn. 

IntelHgent beHef makes firm faith. St. Peter 
says that the things of the Bible which are hard 
to be understood, are by the unlearned and the 
unstable wrested to their own destruction. Who 
are the unlearned and unstable? Those who are 
unlearned are apt to be unstable, for that believer 
who has no intelligent reason for his belief cannot 
be stable; he cannot be sure that he may not 
some day lose his faith altogether. 

The sponge absorbs easily, but it also gives out 
as easily under a little pressure. So do the 
human sponges. They take up whatever doc- 
trine they chance to be dipped in, and are liable 
at any time when put under pressure, to give 
that up and in turn take in something exactly 
different; and so they become unstable souls, so 
uncertain and changeable that they believe for 
the time almost anything that others about them 
believe. 

One period of life, especially, tests any believ- 
er. I call it the period of transition. Every 
young person, especially if engaged in reading 
and study, comes to a time when the powers of 
reason are growing fast, and habits of independ- 
ent thought begin to start inquiry. The growing 
mind asks a reason for things; and so important 
is this spirit of inquiry, that all discovery and 
invention, and all human improvements are large- 
ly due to it. Luther and the Great Reformation 
would never have been linked in history, but for 
his earnest determination to know, by independ- 
ent search, what is truth. 



16 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Suppose, now, that in this transition state be- 
tween the intuitive and the rational periods of 
our development, one is without a knowledge of 
the evidences of Christianity. He begins to say 
of one thing after another which he may have 
been taught, ''that is not tr.ue! I cannot any 
longer believe it." He begins to untie from one 
stake, but has no other to tie to; and so drifts 
away from all fastenings into a general doubt, if 
not denial, of all truth. Faith suffers wreck. 

HI. Such intelligent and firm faith helps us 
to a better service; it gives the tongue of the 
learned and fits us to speak a word in season to 
him that is weary. 

The deeper our conviction and the firmer our 
persuasion of truth, the more intensely shall we 
be in earnest, and it is this grand quality of ear- 
nestness that convinces and persuades others. In 
fact, the earnestness, born of clear, deep and un- 
changeable conviction, is the most moving, melt- 
ing force this side of God. It is a fire, to burn; 
a hammer, to break; a sword, to pierce. It be- 
comes a contagious enthusiasm which is the 
mysterious secret of eloquence. Others see and 
feel when you know you are right and true, and 
they begin to say, '*I am afraid I am not right." 

There is, therefore, intense meaning in our 
Lord's w^ords: ''Every scribe, instructed into the 
kingdom of heaven, is like unto a householder 
that bringeth forth out of his treasure things new 
and old." The knowledge of divine things, that 
comes by faithful study and instruction, becomes 
to its possessor a treasure out of which he brings 
for the instruction of others, things new and old; 
and a thorough mastery of the evidences of 



WEIGHING THE PROOFS, 17 

Christianity will accumulate an inexhaustible 
fund of facts and arguments, with which one can 
not be at a loss, when meeting the inquirer or the 
doubter. 

It is true that many an ignorant disciple has 
been both firm in faith and rich in service. But 
even he has studied one kind of evidences, and it 
is his knowledge of them that makes him strong. 
The evidences he has mastered are those which 
are understood by experience rather than argu- 
ment. God has made it possible for even the 
most unlearned to know that the Bible is His 
Word, by finding it the power of God to their 
salvation and sanctification. There are simple- 
minded believers who know nothing of the proofs 
from prophecy and miracle, who do know that 
God is faithful to his promises, and see the miracle 
of the new heart and changed life actually 
wrought in themselves. Christ is a living Saviour 
by that most infallible proof — what He has done 
and is doing for them. He opened their blind 
eyes to see their sin and need, and his beauty and 
love; he cleansed the leprosy of their guilt, cured 
the palsy of their helplessness and the fever of 
their raging passion, and cast out the demon 
from their hearts. Jerry McAuley, at whose 
burial thousands sadly gathered, had, in his own 
conversion, as great an evidence of Christianity as 
though Christ's word had raised him from the 
dead! What less than the power of God could in 
a moment recover such a man from a life conspic- 
uous for every crime, and not only set him free 
from the chains of his vices, but make him an 
apostle of grace to rescue other perishing souls! 



18 MANY INFALLIliLE PROOFS. 

But, notwithstanding it is possible to know by- 
personal experience the truth of the gospel by its 
power, is there any reason why the other depart- 
ments of evidence should not be studied? Is it 
not important to satisfy others? and is it not 
the peculiar quality of experimental knowledge 
that it cannot be understood except by those and 
who have conducted the experiment? 

Some experience misleads, and is not a safe 
guide or test of truth, until it is itself tested by 
the word of God. Mr. Wesley, in his day, found 
many who claimed to have such experience of 
grace as to be raised above all danger, even of 
sin; but he says that not one in thirty of these 
perfectionists held out or retained the blessing 
they claimed to have. 

We should understand both kinds of evidence, 
whether from argument or experiment. Need- 
less ignorance is not right, on matters so import- 
ant. Are our convictions so firm that we should 
not be glad to have them take deeper root? Can 
not a human body stand on two legs better than 
on one? Let us seek to establish our own faith like 
the very cedar of Lebanon, and so help to make 
others the firmer, by guiding the honest inquirer 
to the light of truth. 

For the sake, then, of all who are desirous to 
know the truth, let us ''write the vision and make 
it plain upon the tablets. " For the sake of mak- 
ing the disciple stronger and abler to do good 
work for Christ, taking the wise in their own 
craftiness, meeting the objections of the sceptic, 
who, however wise in science, is ignorant of 
scripture and its august claims; for the sake of 
creating or establishing faith, it is of the first im- 



WEIGHING THE PROOFS. 19 

portance carefully and candidly to study the evi- 
dences of Christianity. 

It is but a small part of the broad territory, 
however, over which we shall be able to tread, 
in this little volume. Prophecy and miracle con- 
firm the Word; Science and Revelation are co- 
witnesses to the same God; astronomy hints 
His eternity, immensity, infinity; natural philo- 
sophy tells of His omniscience, omnipotence, om- 
nipresence; physiology suggests His wisdom and 
goodness; the beginnings of life, of consciousness, 
of intelligence and of conscience, are miracles 
which cannot be accounted for without Almighty 
power, and ought to make both Atheism and 
Pantheism alike impossible; while the heart of 
man and the history of man unite to witness to a 
need and a craving never filled except by Christ 
Jesus. 

Yet, while these firm persuasions root them- 
selves in the very fibers of our being, in dealing 
with those who find candid doubts and difficulties 
in the way of faith, we must not take too much 
as granted. Without assuming much, it behooves 
us to begin at the beginning and feel our way, 
step by step, guarding every statement with 
scrupulous exactness, and testing arguments and 
proofs with impartiality and candor. 

The writer feels deep sympathy with honest 
doubt, in which is found one mark of earnest 
search after truth, and of which is born all reason- 
able and intelligent faith. He has no wish to 
tilt the lance in the field of theological contro- 
versy, or take part in any war of words, or advo- 
cate any sectarian views however popular. The 
Christian religion sets up the most august claim, 



20 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

yet it invites and challenges the severest and most 
rigid test of proof. Let us accept the challenge 
and apply the test. 

Argument should be conducted calmly. En- 
thusiasm sometimes betrays into rash conclusions. 
There is a white heat of earnestness, that comes 
not of sound logic, but of mere sensibility and 
emotional ardor and fervor. Persuasion differs 
from conviction. Appeals to feeling often warp 
the judgment; the eloquence of burning speech 
sways the will and sometimes swings it to the 
side of error and wrong. Conviction is wrought 
of calm, cool reasoning: it waits upon sound ar- 
gument and rests upon logical conclusions: after 
dispassionate address to the reason has produced 
conviction, we may arouse the sensibilities and 
mould the will into resolve. But, at the outset, the 
doubter needs to be met as a doubter, with clear 
analysis, exact statement and convincing proofs. 

On what principles then should we study the 
Evidences of Christianity? 

First of all, in a truly impartial and scientific 
spirit. Science is knowledge; it deals with what 
is, or may be, known; compels a clear compre- 
hension of truths or facts; has little to do with 
ingenious theories. Sometimes a shrewd guess at 
truth is like a lamp, let down into the darkness, to 
see whether it will show us what is in the depths; 
but still a guess is a guess — a theory, a theory. 
And, as much harm has been done to our Christ- 
ian faith, by infidels who take things for granted, 
it is wxU not to weaken our position by assuming 
even what is true. 

We need not only to think on religious ques- 
tions with scientific exactness and accuracy, but 



WEIGHING THE PROOFS. 21 

even to make careful statements. Daniel Webster 
declared that not one man in fifty states a fact 
exactly, without exaggeration or diminution; and 
Burke said that every word in a sentence is one 
of the feet on which it walks, and to lengthen or 
shorten which may change its course. 

Second, we need also concentration of atten- 
tion: in other words, to do with the mind what 
we do with a burning glass, gather the rays and 
focalize them upon one point. Without such 
concentration, no acquisition of knowledge or 
even application of mind is possible. If a subject 
repays study at all, it rewards the most conscien- 
tious concentration of all our mental faculties. 

Third, we need also discrimination, to learn 
to distinguish things which differ, but which may 
seem alike, such as facts and inferences, facts and 
theories. Mark Hopkins says, that men who are 
*'most reliable in observing facts are often least so 
in drawing inferences. '' You may depend on the 
fact, but distrust the conclusions. Antecedents and 
causes are not the same. Chill antecedes fever, 
but does not cause it; so of blossom and fruit. 
There is risk of forging artificial links. It is 
alike unscientific, to join what belong apart, and 
to part what belong together. 

Fourth, it is absurd to demand the same sort of 
evidence in Ethics as in Mathe^natics. The nature 
of evidence is adapted to its object. Mathemat- 
ical evidence concerns quantity; Moral evidence 
concerns the relations between intelligent beings. 
You can prove, mathematically, that two and 
two make four; can you prove, matJiematically , 
that food builds up and fever kills, or that honesty 
is a virtue? There are many truths capable of moral 



22 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

demonstration, that defy the mathematical, yet 
are none the less truths. 

Fifth, we should cultivate scientific impartial- 
ity, not coming to the study of truth with a bias 
of prejudice, or a preconceived theory, to hinder 
impartial investigation and conclusions. 

Robertson says, that critics inform Shakes- 
peare with their own notions, and then find in 
his writings the sentiments they have put there, 
as Munchausen's wolf ate into his horse, and, 
was driven homeward in the horse's skin. The 
Romanist comes to the Bible with a theory, and 
warps its testimony to fit the crook of his dogma. 

Sixth, we should avoid "begging the question," 
and therefore beware lest we assume things to be 
true, which are false, or false, which are true. 
Strauss, knowing that Christianity is based on 
miracles, and especially the miracle of Christ's 
resurrection, begins by assuming miracles to be 
impossible; and says, that ''whatever Christ did, 
or was, he can have done nothing superhuman or 
supernatural. '* Thus he starts by begging the 
whole question at issue. To allow such an as- 
sumption, to begin with, compels us of course to 
reject Christianity as a divine religion. Its very 
basis would be fraud or at best a blunder. 

A prominent pulpit orator says: "The trouble 
with Ingersoll, is this: he has selected the excres- 
cences of human life, as it has grown in churches, 
and has represented the excrescences as the 
essence of religion. Suppose a physician, wish- 
ing to get up a museum, representing the human 
body in all ages and conditions, should collect 
idiots and lunatics, with wens and warts all over 
them. Suppose that the physician should gather 



WEIGHING THE PROOFS. 23 

them into a museum, and say: "There's humanity 
for you; what do you think of that?" That is what 
IngersoU is doing in the reHgious world. He 
says scores of true things, that have been said be- 
fore, but he doesn't know it. He is not widely 
read in theology. I'm afraid he doesn't read his 
Bible very much. What does he read it for? I'll 
tell you, The doves, flying over the landscape, 
see all that is sweet and peaceful, but when the 
buzzard and the vulture fly abroad, the first thing 
they see is a loathsome carcass, and, if it is any- 
where in sight, they don't fail to see it. IngersoU 
sees what he is looking after. He is a turkey 
buzzard!" 

Seventh, much depends upon our mental and 
moral attitude, whether we are willing to be 
convinced, or deliberately take a position of 
hostility. Are we disposed to find harmony, or 
disagreement, between the Bible and universal 
truth? And if there be apparent discord, are we 
willing to wait patiently, until, as in stereoscopic 
pictures, we find the common focus, which brings 
harmony and unity? 

Goethe says: ** Whoever reproaches an author 
with obscurity, should first examine himself, to 
know if all is clear within. In the twilight a 
very plain writing is illegible." 

Eighth, ridicule is not argument, and leads to 
no safe conclusion. It is easy to appear to over- 
throw truth by ridicule. Voltaire has been com- 
pared to a school-boy, exciting laughter by pen- 
cilling a moustache on some fine antique statuary, 
and IngersoU sets up a man of straw, and then 
pelts it with ridicule ; and unthinking people 
mistake the man of straw for a real image of the 



H MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

religion of Christ, and ridicule for argument 
You might as well try to put out the stars with a 
vvatering-pot, or cannonade Gibraltar with pop 
guns and putty! 

Ninth, perspicuity, both of thought and speech, 
is very needful. Obscurity may mislead even an 
honest man. To get hold of an idea clearly, and 
then put it in the plainest, fewest words, is a great 
triumph of brain and tongue. Some writers, as 
Whately says in his introduction to Bacon's es- 
says, seem to think that it is a sign of a master 
mind, when thought glooms faintly out, like stars 
through a bank of fog. It is always possible, if 
^ne has a thought worth anything, to put it in 
plain words; and why not in good, homely An- 
glo-Saxon? 

At the twentieth anniversary of the installa- 
tion of Rev. Dr. Crosby, Rev. Dr. John Hall said 
happily: ''A minister ought to be a student of 
the Bible, in the original languages in which it 
was written; but he should be careful to preach 
in English, which his congregation can readily 
understand. " 

It is a sad fact that, so far as making them- 
selves understood is concerned, some writers 
and speakers might as well be using an un- 
known tongue; they are, as Paul says, but as 
a barbarian to the hearer. It is very foolish to 
infer, when you cannot understand a man, that he 
is too wise and learned to be understood. Wis- 
dom and learning are just what help a man to be 
understood. 

Tenth, It is safe to distrust any argument that 
Insults common sense. What is called "meta- 
^hysics" is often only a beclouding of a hearer's 



WEIGHING THE PROOFS. 25 

mind by subtleties that are meant to confuse and 
bewilder. A certain case at law turned on the 
resemblance between two car wheels, and Web- 
ster and Choate were the opposing counsel. To 
a common eye, the wheels looked as if made 
from the same model, but Choate, by a train of 
hair-splitting reasoning, and a profound discourse 
on the "fixation of points," tried to overwhelm 
the jury with metaphysics, and compel them to 
conclude, against the evidence of their eyes, that 
there was really hardly a shadow of essential re- 
semblance. Webster rose to reply: *'But, gentle- 
men of the jury," said he, as he opened wide his 
great black eyes, and stared at the big twin 
wheels before him, '* there they are — look at 'em!" 
And as he thundered out these words, it was as 
though one of Jupiter's bolts had struck the earth. 
That one sentence and look shattered Choate's 
subtle argument to atoms, and the cunning so- 
phistry on the "fixation of points," dissolved as 
into air. I have great confidence in the strong 
common sense of an honest mind, feeling the 
utter worllilessness of an argument, even when 
unable to tell the reason why. 

A christian physician, in a recent address be- 
fore a class graduating from a medical college, 
remarked: "Doubtless some of you remember 
reading, that it was the contemplation of a statue 
of an illustrious member of our profession which 
led Coleridge to this strong utterance, as to the 
simian origin of the race: *Look at that head of 
Cline, by Chantrey. Is that forehead, that nose, 
those temples, and that chin, akin to the monkey 
tribe? No, no! To a man of sensibility, no 
argument could disprove the bestial theory, so 



26 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

convincingly, as a quiet contemplation of that 
fine bust!' " 

These are some of the principles upon which 
we purpose to examine, at least in outline, a few 
of the "many infallible proofs," that the Bible is 
the Word of God, and that Jesus Christ is the Son 
of God. And, if no one shall find any new light, 
the serene consciousness will, at least, be ours, 
that we have tried to help doubting souls, and 
have at least been intellectually honest, and true 
to our own convictions. 

Upon this whole subject we have heard few 
things more wisely spoken than the admirable 
axiom of Dr. C. F. Deems: ''Believe your beliefs 
and doubt your doubts. Do not make the com- 
mon mistake of sceptics, doubting your beliefs 
and believing your doubts." Or as Goethe says 
again, ''Give us your convictions, as for doubts 
wc have enough of them already." 



PART I 



THE VOLUME OF THE BOOK. 



CHAPTER 11. 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 



Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy 
men of God spake aj ^y^^jj/ w^?'^ moved by the Holy Ghost, ii 
Peter i: 21. 

What grounds are there for holding the Christ- 
ian rehgion to be of divine origin and supreme 
obligation? This is the question, around which 
all else clusters. The Bible is but the great 
Book, and Christ, the great Person , of the Christ- 
ian religion. 

Christian Evidences have, for convenience, 
been divided into *' External" and "Internal.'* 
The Internal include the character of Christ him- 
self and of the doctrine and morality taught by 
Christianity, its adaptation to human wants, the 
unity and consistency of the Bible, and the marks 
of truth, purity and sincerity in its various 
writers. The External, or historical proofs, are 
such as are found in man s need of a revelation 
from God, and the corresponding presumption in 
its favor as a fact; the authenticity and credibility 
of scripture history, the argument from prophecy 
and miracle as sealing and sanctioning such re- 
velation; the historical argument from the spread 
of the gospel in the face of opposition, and from 
the positive blessings it has conferred upon the 
individual and upon society. From these we 
shall select a few of the more prominent forms of 



30 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

proof, which best suit our present purpose, and 
the narrow space we have at disposal in a small 
volume. 

Our examination naturally and properly starts 
with the External proofs, for Internal evidence 
largely concerns one's own experience, and can- 
not be appreciated, or in fact apprehended, with- 
out experiment. But, in order that one may be 
disposed to "taste and see," he must approach 
the subject from without. If the Gospel of Christ 
is God's golden milestone, let me from outside by 
some rational road find my way to it; then I can 
stand at the milestone itself and from that, as an 
inside point, take my survey. 

If it can be shown that, starting from any 
proper point, "All roads lead to Rome," — that 
the external evidences all converge in the gospel; 
that, for certain great facts and effects, no ade- 
quate cause can be found, except that God has 
authoritatively spoken to man in the Bible and 
through Christ Jesus; then how can we honestly 
evade or avoid the conclusion that Christianity is 
the divine religion and entitled to our homage 
and obedience? 

Among these external evidences two are es- 
pecially prominent: prophecy and miracle. Proph- 
ecy is a miracle of utterance. It prepares the 
way for coming events or persons, and attests 
them, in advance, as forming part of a divine plan, 
reaching through the ages. Prophecy and Pro- 
vidence are, therefore, twin sisters. There is no 
grander thought in this Bible than that, back of 
all these apparently capricious, conflicting and 
accidental changes of human history, there is an 
infinite God, whose omniscience and omnipresence 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 31 

forbid that anything should escape his knowledge 
or evade his power, and whose goodness assures 
a benevolent design, even behind seeming disas- 
ter. How often do we look at human history and 
behold only one awful tragedy! 

"Right forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne! 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, 
Standeth God amid the shadows, keeping watch above his own." 

Prophecy, unmistakably outlining events be- 
forehand, shows that God is behind the curtain, 
and that his hand controls and shapes the history 
and destiny of men. The caprice is resolved into 
a consistent purpose; the conflict is only the 
apparent discord and disorder which are owing 
to our partial point of view; the accident becomes 
an incident in one grand, harmonious plan, where 
no chance can occur. We have a Providence, 
with its prevision and provision and presidence, 
directing and arranging, permitting and decree- 
ing. 

But prophecy does more than assure us of 
a Providence. It serves to outline the future, so 
that we have glimpses of coming glory and tri- 
umph for God and godliness. It brings the past 
and future into inseparable union with the present 
and spreads the grand scene before us in its 
unity. We are thus permitted to foretaste the 
future: the ancient Hebrew, by the glass of Mes- 
sianic prophecy, beheld the Lamb of God taking 
away the sin of the world, and so the cross of 
Christ was borne backward through the ages, and 
the atonement was a present and accomplished 
fact to Abraham and David; and to us, 
to-day, the prophecies of the New Testament 
are the perspective glasses that bring nigh the 



32 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Delectable Mountains of a completed redemption, 
and make visible the towers of the celestial city! 

Nothing therefore can be of more importance 
to a Bible student than a mastery of the prophetic 
Scriptures. Prophecies, already fulfilled, put the 
clear broad seal of God upon the Bible; prophe- 
cies unfulfilled, serve to inform our faith as to 
coming developments, and project us forward in- 
to the consummate wonders of the final day of 
victory. 

Why does so much weight attach to the argu- 
ment from prophecy? Christian evidence is like 
the holy city, which John saw% four sided, with 
gates opening toward every quarter: why then 
go in by one gate rather than others? We re- 
ply, there are indeed a score of paths by which 
the advocates of the inspiration of Scripture ap- 
proach the heart of the theme; but the Scripture 
itself makes this the grand highway of proof. 
Hear the apostle Peter: "We have also a more 
sure word of prophecy, whereunto ye do well 
that ye take heed as unto a light that shineth in a 
dark place, until the day-dawn and the day star 
arise in your hearts; knowing this first, that no 
prophecy of the Scripture is of any private inter- 
pretation (invention or suggestion) ; for the 
prophecy came not in old time by ^he will of 
man, but holy men of God spake, moved by the 
Holy Ghost." 

The Scriptures affirm that "the natural man 
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, 
neither can he know them because they are 
spiritually discerned." There are some sources 
of proof, whose force can be felt only by a con- 
verted man. But here is an evidence which needs 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 33 

for its examination only the reason of the natural 
man. He is in the darkness of doubt; he has 
not yet found, by faith, the personal and inward 
knowledge of God. Here is the very light which 
God gives him, to lead him to the rational con- 
clusion that the Bible is the Word of God, and so 
prepare him for the higher guidance of faith. 
Accepting the will of God and the way of salva- 
tion, as here revealed, he is led up to those 
blessed mountain tops where the day star shines 
and the day dawn breaks in a flood of glory. 

The Bible presents as foremost the proof from 
prophecy. Other arguments imply that we have 
examined this — other proofs branch out from this 
or fork from it; here is the foundation on which 
other arguments rest. If the Scriptures issue from 
the hand or mind of God, the seeker after truth 
asks for his royal signature and seal. And 
prophecy claims to be exactly this: the solemn 
seal of God's own hand upon the sacred scroll.* 

This, then, is the mode chosen by God to 
make plain to man the fact that He has spoken. 
He says to loyal subjects in His great empire, 
*'By this unfailing sign shall you know that a pro- 
clamation of my will is from my hand: through 
my chosen messengers, I will shew you things to 
come." And this may well be the gateway and 
highway to conviction, since it is so broad and 
straight and plain that none need err. Men have 
an instinctive conviction that when a future event 
is clearly and closely foretold, so that no guess, 
however shrewd, can account for it, and the event 



* The appeal of God to fulfilled prophecy is found aV 
through the Bible. Deut. xviii:2i, 22; Isaiah xli:2i 1023; Jere 
miah xxvuiig; 2 Peter iriQ to 21. 



34 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

corresponds in every respect to the prophetic out- 
Hne, it is a proof of the working of some power 
above nature. How natural that God should se- 
lect this intuitive sense as the basis of his appeal! 
that he should say to men, ''when I speak through 
a fellow-man, he shall speak words, or do works, 
plainly beyond the unaided natural power of man. " 
Hence came both prophecy and miracle as the 
double witness to our holy religion. These two 
are closely akin. Prophecy is a miracle of utter- 
ance. Miracle is prophecy in action. Both im- 
ply supernatural power: one in words, the other 
in works; and hence both carry the sanction of 
God. 

To establish one prophecy is to carry the 
whole fortress of the enemy by storm, for it 
settles the inspiration of the Word of God. To 
establish one prophecy of Christ is to settle not 
only his authority as a teacher, but his divinity, 
for it puts God's seal and sanction on Christ's 
witness concerning himself. Mark his own appeal 
to his prophecies: John xiv:29, **And now I have 
told you before it come to pass that when it is 
come to pass ye might believe.'' 

The argument from prophecy must be a for- 
midable one, since the foes of our faith have di- 
rected their biggest guns against itv Porphyry 
found such very startling correspondences be- 
tween Daniel's predictions and historic events, 
that he saw no escape from conviction but in 
denying the authenticity of the prophecy, arguing 
that it was never written till events supplied the 
material. Paine did not venture to deny the 
authenticity of the prophecy, but simply denied 
that in any proper sense it was fulfilled. Be- 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 35 

tween these two scoffers, however, we have both 
the authenticity and the fulfillment of prophecy 
admitted. 

The death of the Lord Jesus Christ was so 
distinctly foretold in the fifty-third chapter of 
Isaiah, that Bolingbroke, in order to break the 
force of the argument from this prophecy, was 
forced to assert that Jesus brought on his own 
crucifixion by a series of preconcerted measures, 
merely to give the disciples who came after him 
the triumph of an appeal to the old prophecies! 
You see how grand must be the power of an argu- 
ment, which compels infidels to invent such im- 
possible theories to evade the force of its mighty 
appeal! 

What is a prophecy? The primary idea of a 
prophet is not one who foretells, but one who 
** brings to light" or ''makes manifest." A man 
might be a prophet, while yet not foretelling any 
future event. Elisha was simply an inspired 
teacher, unfolding the hidden things of God. 
The idea of foretelling is secondary: first, insight; 
second, foresight. Very naturally God, in giving 
to a man insight into His secret mysteries, might 
grant insight into that future which has to do 
with these mysteries; and such insight is fore- 
sight. Oftentimes a true insight into the present, 
implies a foresight of the future as the key to 
present problems. 

Foresight was frequently granted to prophets, 
in order to furnish additional evidence of their 
divine mission and commission. But the prime 
element in the prophet is capacity to teach spirit- 
ual truth. This discrimination is important, for 
first, it leads us to look for evidence of the pro- 



36 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

phetic office and authority in the very nature of 
the truths he proclaims and teaches. In the 
character of his message is often higher proof of 
his divine caUing than in miracle or prediction. 
This was preeminently true of Christ, the greatest 
of prophets. Secondly, this conception of the 
true criterion of a prophet will lead to rejection 
of any whose teachings are plainly unsound and 
unscriptural, even though he might work apparent 
wonders or predict future events. The Bible 
teaches us to find prophetic credentials, first of all, 
in this conformity of his moral and spiritual 
teaching to a divine pattern. There must be 
correspondence between his utterances and the 
Word of God and the moral sense of mankind. 
(Deut. xiii:3.) 

In this law which demands, for prophetic 
character and utterance, consonance with the 
claim to inspiration, we find a grand factor in our 
argument. God asks that His word be held to 
be inspired, not only because prophetic writers 
have wrought miracles or spoken predictions, but 
because they spake as men would speak who were 
moved by the Holy Ghost. Their teachings 
present such conceptions of God and man and 
their mutual relations as accord with the intuitive 
convictions of man's moral being; the aeal of God 
is upon the very quality of their utterances. 

We are prepared to follow the logic of this 
position, and affirm that the prophetic office is 
essentially perpetual. It may not be needful that 
miracles be wrought or predictions spoken; but 
he is a true successor in the prophetic office who 
speaks according to the revealed word, and whose 
utterance God seals and sanctions by the power 
of the Holy Ghost. 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 37 

For brevity's sake we confine our argument to 
that aspect of prophecy which concerns the future, 
and shall show how grand a confirmation of the 
claims of the word of God is found in the obvi- 
ous foretelling of events. But first let us clearly 
understand that it is not commonly the object of 
prophetic prediction to inform us as to the de- 
tails of the future; but rather, after an event is 
fulfilled, to shew that it all lay in the mind of God, 
and was part of his eternal plan."^ 

This may explain the necessary obscurity of 
prophecy. It presents a lock, for which only 
subsequent history can supply the key. If pro- 
phetic details were clearly announced, wicked men 
would be prompted, like Julian, to conspire to 
defeat the prediction; or disciples might be sup- 
posed to combine to bring about a seeming ful- 
filment, in order to authenticate the prophecy. 
When prophecy is fulfilled, it must be by no de- 
sign of men — better still, if against their design, 
that it may be the more apparent that the fulfil- 
ment is wholly of God. For obviously, if fulfilled 
by intent of man, it might be resolved into a sort 
of mere collusion between prophet and those who, 
jealous for the reputation of the divine oracles, 
sought to bring about a correspondence with 
events. The general purpose of prophecy, then, 
concerns not the times in which it is spoken, since 
it is yet unverified; but, when fulfilled, it proves 
the God of prophecy and of Providence to be 
one. It shews us Deus in Historia, a divine ad- 
ministration in the world; and seals, as inspired 
and infallible, the teaching so attested. 

* John ii:20-22, xii:i6, xiv:29, xvi:4, xx:3i; Luke xxiv:6-8, 
xviii:34. 



38 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

A prophecy is not confirmed as a proof of 
revelation until fulfilled; and then it evidences 
God's hand, in proportion to the extent and 
accuracy of its predictions. A prophecy thus 
unlocked by events, opens a door that no man 
can shut, introducing us by a miracle of utterance 
to the very presence of Him to whom all the 
future is as the present, and compelling us to bow 
reverently to hear what He will speak. 

What now are the canons by which a true 
prophecy is to be tested? 

First, it must be such an unveiling of the future 
that no mere human foresight or wisdom or 
sagacity could have guessed it. Human beings 
sometimes exhibit remarkable foresight and fore- 
cast, where no supernatural element exists. A 
statesman might detect elements of corruption 
which lead him to predict the overthrow of some 
nation within a given time. Comparison of the 
records of a series of years enables a weather 
prophet to foretell storms, and even the compara- 
tive healthfulness of seasons. But back of 
this there lies simply an induction from facts 
and principles. 

Secondly, the prediction must deal in details, 
sufficiently to exclude shrewd guesswork. General 
statements may be made with often a remarkable 
forecast of events; but every definite, specific de- 
tail or description adds to the improbability of its 
being an uninspired utterance, until the improb- 
ability becomes impossibility. 

Thirdly, there must be such lapse of time, be- 
tween prophecy and fulfilment, as precludes the 
agency of the prophet himself in effecting or 
affecting the result. Otherwise the author of the 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 39 

prediction might by secret, subtle means, bring 
about apparent accomplishment. 

When prophecy is by such marks attested as 
genuine, its value as evidence is beyond words; 
and the argument it furnishes is one of growing 
force. The Christian faith supports its claim by 
a vast number of prophecies pertaining to different 
periods and persons. The argument from these 
prophecies began to be of use when the first pre- 
diction was fulfilled; and every successive event, 
which added a new feature to the profile, added 
strength and weight to the argument. Prophecy 
is thus at first a rill, receiving constantly tributary 
streams, till it grows to a river whose grand 
flood of evidence sweeps everything before it. 

All through old testament times, the thous- 
and hints of prophecy were fulfilling. Then 
Christ was born, and the most numerous and 
striking of all predictions met and mingled in 
Him, so that the apostles could boldly say, in 
support of the august claims of the gospel whose 
central figure he was: *'To Him give all the 
prophets witness. " No miracle, which he wrought, 
so unmistakably set on him the seal of God, as 
the convergence of the thousand lines of prophecy 
in him, as in one burning focal point of dazzling 
glory. Every sacrifice lit, from Abel's altar until 
the last passover of the passion week, pointed as 
with flaming fingers to Calvary's cross! Nay all 
the centuries moved as in solemn procession to 
lay their tributes upon Golgotha. 

But that age of grand fulfilments was also the 
age of grander prophecies. And so the evidence 
goes on accumulating; the fulfilment of words, 
long since spoken, confronts us to-day. The 



40 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

histories of Assyrian lion, Medo-Persian bear, 
Greek leopard, and Roman complex "beast;" 
the existing facts of Tyre, Babylon, Egypt, 
Nineveh; the remarkable dispersion of the Jews, 
the most clannish of peoples, most attached to 
their own land, rich enough to buy every acre of 
Palestine with pearls, yet providentially kept out 
of it till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled — 
all these, and a hundred fold more, furnish a 
colossal argument for the divine origin of the 
prophetic scriptures; and yet the power and 
weight of this argument are growing still. Miracles 
impressed the people who lived in the age of 
miracles, with a power which is comparatively 
lost on us by the distance of time. However 
conclusive the argument from miracles, it cannot 
impress us as it did those who witnessed the 
works. But the prophecies, fulfilled and fulfilling 
before our eyes, become a new miracle, more 
conclusive and impressive every year, and adapted 
to prove omniscience as unmistakably as the 
miracles of two thousand years ago proved omni- 
potence. Scripture is seen by us as a colossal 
wheel, compassing all history with its gigantic 
and awful rim, and full of the eyes that tell of one 
who sees all things! You see the falsehood of the 
cavil which sneers at Christian faith, ^s resting 
on no better basis than the myths and marvels of 
eighteen hundred years ago. We have before 
our very eyes some of the most awe-inspiring 
proofs of our holy religion. Disciples, who saw 
his miracles and had evidence of the senses, left 
us their witness to Christ. But, of many proph- 
ecies, they had only the record, while we have 
the evidence of our very senses to their fulfil- 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 41 

ment. Some unbelievers say, "could we see a 
miracle we would believe. " But he who can see 
prophecy fulfilled and not believe, is not to be 
persuaded by any other miracle. *'If they hear 
not Moses and the prophets neither would 
they be persuaded though one rose from the 
dead. " 

The Christian religion is the only religion that 
has ever dared to rest its claim upon either 
miracle or prophecy, The appeal to such super- 
natural signs is so bold, that its audacity is one 
proof of its genuineness. The Old Testament, 
which even the most captious historical criticism 
concedes to have been in the hands of Jews at 
least 200 years B. C, draws a clear, minute and 
striking picture of future events, and calmly 
stakes, upon the result, all its claims to a divine 
origin. It challenges history, archaeology, 
science, all the forms of human knowledge, to 
show one instance in which prediction has failed. 
This is divine boldness of appeal. There are 
false faiths, like Mohammedanism and Buddhism, 
that have tried to prop up their claims on pre- 
tended miracles, but even these have never ven- 
tured to frame prophecies. 

Pagan religions claimed support from oracular 
responses, but what a vast gulf divides them 
from the oracles of God ! They were trivial in im- 
port and purport, not worthy to be the responses 
of a divine being. The ends they served were 
often personal and selfish. The infiuence which 
secured them was unfit to move a god; it was 
sometimes greed of gain, or even servile fear, to 
which the appeal was made. They spoke because 
the voice of authority compelled, or the offer of 



42 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

gold persuaded. No poor or obscure man could 
arouse the sluggish divinity. The utterances of 
heathen oracles were never spontaneous, as 
though inspired by a divine fulness of matter, but 
were always reluctant, difficult to secure, rare and 
costly. When demanded, delay was required for 
preparation; and when the response was not 
verified, a thousand apologies were framed for 
the failure; there was on the part of the inquirer 
some omission or blunder; there was some mis- 
take in the amanuensis who took down the re- 
sponse; or perhaps the Gods were not disposed 
to answer. And when the best responses were 
obtained they were ambiguous and equivocal. 
The most famous oracles were so disgraced by 
love of money that they became venal. The rich 
or powerful seldom found difficulty in obtaining 
favorable responses. Philip of Macedon by royal 
influence and gold thus bribed the oracle; and 
Demosthenes said, the Pythian goddess "Philip- 
ised. '' 

A few examples may be given of the adroit 
ambiguity of the heathen oracles which justified 
Milton's famous line: 

* 'Ambiguous, and with double sense deluding." 

Before Maxentius left Rome to meet Constan- 
tine in that famous battle on the banks of the 
Tiber, he consulted the Sibylline books. **The 
guardians of these ancient oracles were as well 
versed in the arts of this world as they were 
ignorant of the secrets of fate; and they returned 
him a very prudent answer, which might adapt 
itself to the event, and secure their reputation, 
whatever should be the chance of arms:" 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 43 

'' Illo die, hostein Roinanorum esse perititrmn.'' 

**On that day the enemy of Rome will perish. " 

Whoever proved the vanquished prince became 
of course the enemy of Rome. The defeat of 
Maxentius was overwhelming; he himself, at- 
tempting to escape back into the city over the 
Milvian bridge, was forced by the crowd into the 
river and drowned by the weight of his own 
armor. 

The general characteristics of oracles were 
ambiguity, obscurity and convertibility, so that 
one answer would agree with several various and 
sometimes directly opposite events. To Pyrrhus: 

''AiOy te. ^acido, Romanos vincere posse.'' 

*'I declare thee, O Pyrrhus, the Romans to be able to conquer." 

Herodotus tells us that Crcesus, the sover- 
eign^ of Lydia, consulted the Delphic oracle as 
to whether he should proceed against the Per- 
sians; and this was the reply, as Cicero renders it: 

" Croesus, Halym penetrans , inagnam pe^'vertet 
opiim vim. " 

"By crossing Halys, Croesus will destroy a mighty power." 

He thought of course the kingdom would be 
that of Cyrus; it proved to be his own. A third 
time he consulted the oracle — anxious to be in- 
formed whether his power would ever suffer dim- 
inution. The Pythian answered: 

**When o'er the Medes a mule shall sit on high, 
O'er pebbly flermus then soft Lydian fly! 
Fly with all haste: for safety scorn thy fame, 
Nor scruple to deserve a coward's name." 

The catch was here: this ''mule" was Cyrus, whose 
mixed parentage had caused this opprobrious 
epithet to be applied to him. 



44 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Compare Shakespeare — the witch's prophecy: 

**The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose." 

These were mere tricks — Hke the veritable sign, 
unpunctuated, over a barber's shop in London: 

"What do you think 
I'll shave for a penny and give you a drink" 

Read as an exclamation, it encouraged applicants 
for a service that would cost nothing and pay 
them with a dram beside. But when such gra- 
tuitous service was applied for, the shrewd barber 
only repeated the words as a question. 

What would be thought of the oracles of God 
if they descended to the puerilities of an ambigu- 
ous riddle, that might be read both ways, and so 
could not fail of accomplishment! 

The extreme difficulty of framing a prophecy 
which shall prove accurate, may be seen in that 
familiar but crude rhyme known as "Mother 
Shipton's Prophecy. " Some years ago it ap- 
peared as a pretended relic of a remote day, and 
claimed to have predicted the invention of steam 
as a motive power, diving suits, balloons, a three- 
fold revolution in France; the rise of D'Israeli, 
the Jew, as a figure in English politics, the erect- 
ion of a crystal palace, etc. After its first ap- 
pearance it was almost forgotten. Years later it 
reappeared, with a few very slight changes in the 
rhyme, such as to be scarcely noticed, and yet so 
including recent events as to make this "proph- 
ecy" seem more startling. At times in arguing 
with skeptics I was met by the statement that 
here was an old ignorant woman who lived four 
hundred years ago, and who had written an "un- 
inspired prophecy which was of undoubted an- 
tiquity, and however rude in shape, containing 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 45 

several remarkable predictions. " So for years I 
have been trying to unearth and expose what 
seemed to me a huge imposture, and having suc- 
ceeded, here record the result. My first clue to 
the forgery was the discovery that at least three 
separate and different versions had been put be- 
fore the people. The changes or variations were 
slight and sly, adroitly accommodating the pre- 
tended prophecy to the new developments of cur- 
rent history: till at last the whole thing has been 
traced to Charles Hindly, who acknowledges him- 
self the author of this prophetic hoax, which was 
written in 1862 instead of 1448, and palmed off 
on a credulous public! It is one of the startling 
proofs of human perversity that the very people 
who will try to cast suspicion on prophecies two 
thousand years old, will, without straining, swal- 
low a forgery that was first published twenty 
years ago, and not even look into its claims to 
antiquity! 

The Christian religion challenges the severest 
test — fulfilled prediction. It is easier to counter- 
feit a miracle than a prophecy; and yet this 
method of confirmation, so certain to bring ex- 
posure to fraud, falsehood or impudent presump- 
tion, is the standard by which the Bible stands or 
falls; on this golden strand of prophecy all these 
divine precepts and promises are strung. Mar- 
vellous is their variety, extent and number, yet 
no prediction has ever failed; and if those whose 
set time has come have not failed, with what 
assurance may we look forward to the sure 
accomplishment of those prophetic words whose 
full time is not yet! 



46 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

There was a certain sublimity about that act 
of the German astronomers who, at Aiken, S. C, 
left the stone, on which their meridian circle rested 
in observing the recent transit of Venus, to stand 
for the use of those who, in June, 2004, shall need 
to watch another transit. Think of it — the faith of 
science in the inflexible order of nature! One hun- 
dred and twenty years hence — three times, at least 
within that space a generation will have perished; 
thrones will have been emptied of occupant after 
occupant; empires will have passed away; changes, 
whose number and gravity are too great now to 
be conceived, will have taken place; nay, human 
history may have come to its great last crisis and 
the millennial march may have begun: but punc- 
tual to a second, without delay or failure, Venus 
will make her transit across the sun's disc. So, 
while scoffers sneer and doubters question, while 
empires vanish and nations perish, prophecy 
moves steadily onward, and. nears its grand ful- 
filment. To a second of time and to the last 
minute jot or tittle of detail, the prophetic word 
shall be fulfilled. 

The wise man will prepare for the sure future, 
get ready and keep ready for the coming crisis. 
Mr. Wiggins, in Canada, from study of the science 
of storms and storm centers, winds,^heir circuits, 
waves and tides, ventured to predict a great 
storm on this planet beginning March 9th, 1883. 
He made his prediction in September, 1882. He 
declared that it would start in the northern Pa- 
cific on the morning of March 9th, strike this 
continent from the south, sweep along the Atlan- 
tic coast on the afternoon of the loth, traveling 
westward south of the 4Sth parallel, and return- 



THE PROPHETIC SEAL. 47 

ing from the Rocky Mountain range, cross the 
meridian of Ottawa, over the great Canadian 
lakes, at noon of the nth. It was at best a 
shrewd guess on the basis of probabilities. 
Meteorology and kindred sciences are not suffici- 
ently reduced to a system, to enable such pre- 
dictions to be made with confidence. And yet 
notwithstanding the doubt that overhung the 
prophecy, wise men made prudent provisions 
against possible disaster — the plans of thousands 
were modified to meet the possible emergency 
and avoid damage; ships put off their day of 
sailing; excursions were deferred; exposed build- 
ings were sheltered and strengthened, that if the 
storm should strike, it might find the people pre- 
pared. Such are the measures which human fore- 
sight and forecast suggest simply in order to be 
on the safe side! What shall be said of the folly, 
presumption, recklessness, that pay no heed to 
the prophetic warnings of the Word of God. 
That sure word of prophecy in clear terms fore- 
tells, beyond the certain day of death, a day 
when time shall be no longer; when earth shall 
be wrapped in a winding sheet of dissolving 
flames; when earth and sea shall give up their 
dead, and the great white throne shall flash upon 
the gaze of countless hosts of our humanity — 
when the books shall be opened, and the dead 
judged! Have you made ready for that day? 
In that storm whose thunders rend the earth and 
shake the sky — whose floods sweep away the last 
refuge of lies and sin — will your house stand, or 
fall forever! 



CHAPTER III. 



THE PROPHECY OF THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 

"And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when 
it is come to pass, ye might believe." — John xiv: 28. 

One prophecy may be taken as a representa- 
tive of all, viz., Christ's predictions as to the 
destruction of Jerusalem, and the dispersion of 
the Jews. Fairly and firmly settle this, that 
these words were literally or substantially spoken 
by Christ before his disappearance from among 
men; and we may safely risk the very fate of the 
Christian faith upon the issue. For, from this 
one passage of Scripture, with its parallel pas- 
sages,* may be demonstrated and vindicated the 
existence of God, his moral government, his gen- 
eral and special providence, the divine inspiration 
of the Holy Scriptures, and the divine character 
and mission of Christ. Here, then, is the very 
field on which to meet candid doubt. But in 
order to a full and fair proof that history meets 
at every point the demands of the prophecy, and 
fills out the prophetic mould, it wilL be best to 
call in as witnesses only the professed opponents 
of Christianity, that it may not appear that the 
claims of Christ and the gospel rest on the par- 
tiality of friends. 

Any fair examination of this matter compels 
us first to ask whether there be a reasonable cer- 



*Matt. xxiv., Mark xiii., Luke xxi. 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 49 

tainty that these prophetic words were spoken or 
written before the events occurred. This inquiry- 
is at the very threshold of the whole investiga- 
tion; to avoid it is to let everything else go 
unproven. A candid criticism can the less evade 
the issue, since it is forced upon us by the foes 
of the Christian religion. Porphyry, in the third 
century of the Christian era, made a desperate 
attack upon the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. 
Finding in the book of Daniel a prophecy that 
had been most minutely fulfilled, he first admitted 
with the utmost frankness that in every particular, 
history had verified the prophecy; and then 
adroitly turned his admission into a weapon of 
attack, arguing that a record so exact could be 
made only after the events: Daniel played the 
part of a historian in the mask of a prophet. If 
Porphyry was the first to suggest this easy escape 
from the argument of prophecy, he was not the 
last. Voltaire, in modern times, has, in the same 
way, admitted the wonderful coincidence between 
those prophecies of the ruin of Jerusalem and the 
wreck of the Jewish nation, and the actual facts; 
but dexterously argues that the pretended proph- 
ecy was never spoken or penned until after Jeru- 
salem was destroyed. 

As to Voltaire himself, any objection coming 
from such a source has very little weight. A man 
who could, in a letter to a friend, declare that 
"history is, after all, nothing but a parcel of tricks 
we play with the dead," and that, "as for the por- 
traits of men in biography, they are, nearly all, 
the creations of fancy;" a man who, when asked 
where he found a certain startling "fact" with 
which he adorns one of his histories, replied, "It 



50 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

is a frolic of my imagination ! " a man whose motto 
was, "Crush the wretch!" and yet who called on 
that same Christ in the dying hour; a man who, 
after leading the host of sceptics and scoffers, as 
the boldest of blasphemers, for sixty years, died 
in agony and remorse so terrible that even the 
Mareschal de Richelieu fled from his bedside, 
declaring that he could not bear so terrible a sight, 
and M. Tronchin affirmed that *'the furies of Ores- 
tes could give but a faint idea of those of Vol- 
taire;" a man, who said to his attending physician, 
"Doctor, I will give you half of what I am worth, 
if you will give me only six months* life," and 
who, when the doctor said, "Sir, you cannot live 
six weeks," shrieked, "Then I shall go to hell, 
and you will go with me ! " and soon after expired ; 
— such a man does not add much weight to his 
own objection. If a man does not feel the force 
of his own argument, others can scarcely be 
expected to give it much importance; and it is 
but too plain that Voltaire was not an honest 
sceptic, but a mocker, a jeerer, a sneerer — who, 
seldom himself in earnest, invented any objection 
which would serve his purpose. Yet, inasmuch 
as an objection may be entitled to weight inde- 
pendent of its author, we shall briefly examine as 
to the date of this prophecy. 

If this charge of fraud could for a moment be 
separated from religion, and looked at with calm, 
cool judgment, without any bias of prejudice, its 
inherent absurdity would be very plain. To sup- 
pose this prophecy to be written after the event, 
is to suppose a deliberate imposture of gigantic 
proportions, palmed off on credulous dupes, in 
the sacred name of religion; a compound of hy- 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 51 

pocrisy, forgery and perjury, such as would dis- 
grace even a monster like Nero. Think of it! A 
man in league with two others, like himself, lays a 
plot to prop up the claims of a mere pretender, 
by secretly preparing a description of an event 
already passed; and then by a series of lies, in- 
ducing men to accept it as a genuine prophecy! 
Could men, who could do that, have written the 
gospels? By the confession even of enemies of 
the religion of Christ, these records abound in the 
loftiest moral teaching, and the most sublime con- 
ceptions of God and duty. There must be some 
consistency between a man and his work; and the 
production of these gospel narratives by such 
abandoned liars, is inconceivable. To believe 
this requires more credulity than to accept the 
Christian religion with scarce a hearing of its 
claims. The supposition of intentional imposture 
in the production of the gospels must be aban- 
doned as untenable; on its face it contradicts 
great established laws of human nature; and it 
supposes the whole body of believers to be im- 
posed upon. 

The Jews were very jealous of their sacred 
trust; considering it their chief advantage, that 
*' unto them were committed the oracles of God. " 
The greatest care was used in compiling the canon. 
The claim of a book to a place in the sacred col- 
lection was weighed with scrupulous nicety. 
Many books are to-day among the ''Apocrypha," 
regarded worthy of being bound up with our Old 
Testament, so pure is their style, so exalted their 
tone; and yet rejected as unworthy to rank as in- 
spired. How could Daniel's book have found a 
place in the canon? The Jews must have be- 



52 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

lieved in its inspired character. Had it come for- 
ward to prefer its claim after its so-called prophe- 
cies were fulfilled, the claim would have been 
instantly rejected. If the book were offered to 
the Jewish church as inspired before the events 
which it foretold, it sustained its claim to pro- 
phetic character and divine authority. 

Suppose something similar in our day. Let 
some pious scoundrel who aspires to rank as a 
prophet try the same mode of imposing on the 
public. Let him write out a minute pretended 
prediction of the War of the Rebellion, and at- 
tempt to make the world believe that he wrote it 
by divine foresight a quarter of a century before 
the war. How long would that pious fraud escape 
detection! A thousand things would combine to 
expose such a sham. Its author would have more 
chance of being cannonaded as a fool or a knave, 
than of being canonized as a saint. So many 
features must combine to put upon such a plot 
even the face of truth, that the detection of the 
scheme would be morally certain. Men would 
begin by asking what sort of a man is this, who 
claims prophetic character? Is he a true man, 
morally upright; is his word beyond a suspicion? 
Is he a sane man, mentally sound, and not misled 
by a delusion? Then if both his mental and 
moral character were found consistent with his 
claim, his prophecy would be subjected to micro- 
scopic scrutiny, whether it bears the internal 
marks of such inspired utterances; and even if 
this test were satisfactorily met, the author would 
still be required to produce evidence satisfactory 
to the common mind that his production was 
written in advance of the events. About matters 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 53 

of this sort we are not naturally credulous. The 
natural jealousy of human nature makes us slow 
to concede to others the high rank of prophetic 
character; and we are more likely to resist the 
proofs that God has chosen a certain man as a 
channel of special revelation, even when the 
proofs are ample, than to yield our homage to an 
unworthy candidate, by a hasty admission of his 
claims. Even if there were those who, within 
the church, conspired to give such false prophet 
a seat on the prophetic throne, their own charac- 
ter would awaken a suspicion of their partnership. 

The exact year of the production of each of 
the four gospels cannot be fixed. But the most 
careful and scholarly modern criticism puts the 
date of St. Matthew's record at about 38 A. D., 
and his record of this prophecy is the fullest, as 
well as the first. Mark wrote A. D., 67 to 69. 
Luke A. D. 63. John A. D. 96. The siege of 
Jerusalem under Titus ended Septembers, 70 A. 
D. The earliest record of this prophecy was 
therefore in writing more than thirty years before 
the event, and the later records from two to seven 
years before. John, the only one of the four who 
wrote after the event, is the only one who makes 
no reference to the prophecy , as though caution had 
been used not to give occasion for the charge 
that the event had given material for the proph- 
ecy. 

But a more convincing proof is at hand. The 
first three centuries were centuries of both perse- 
cution and controversy. No weapon, whether 
sword or pen, that could be used against the 
cause of Christ, was left untried. Yet, although 
these prophecies are familiarly quoted by early 



54 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Christian writers, in support of Christianity, you 
must wait till the days of Porphyry, when the 
third century was in its sunset hours, before one 
writer even questions the genuineness of the 
prophecy! Controversy sifts, from the grain of 
fact, the chaff of fiction or fancy; beneath the 
eagle eye of searching investigation, prompted by 
hostility, even the corruptions or perversions of 
truth are discovered. Judge, then, whether a 
pretended prophecy, never heard of till after the 
event, would wait for three hundred years to be 
called in question; while even a reasonable doubt 
of its genuineness would have supplied its bitter 
foes with an irresistible weapon against the Chris- 
tian religion! As well expect a mighty army, 
under skilled leaders, to hold a walled city in 
constant siege for three centuries, and not discover 
weak places where the walls are propped by rot- 
ten timbers! God permitted those three centuries 
of hottest hostility, with mighty foes arrayed 
against the gospel, in order to show us that the 
origin of Christianity was surrounded by no mists 
of uncertainty or delusion. Her enemies, both 
many and mighty, had to forge other weapons 
of attack beside the audacious charge of fraud. 

Some of the most remarkable of these predic- 
tions are even yet in process of fulfillment. For 
eighteen hundred years since the tall of Jerusa- 
lem, the severe test of history has been applied to 
this prophecy. Christ, with the audacity of one 
who knew whereof he spake, challenged all the 
coming centuries to break his prophetic word; 
for his predictions reached far beyond the ruin of 
the regal city of David. But, as the procession 
of years and even the more august centuries pass 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 55 

on, like military leaders lifting their plumed hel- 
mets in presence of a world's sovereign, the ages, 
in their turn, confess the divine character of the 
prophet, who, so long ago, drew the awful lines 
beyond which they even yet cannot pass. What 
shall we say, then, of the crucial test of Time! 

In this prophecy may the correspondence be 
accounted for by accidental coincidence? To 
answer this proper doubt, consider the law of 
simple and compound probability. When a sin- 
gle prediction is made, about which there is but 
one feature, it may or it may not prove true; 
there is therefore one chance in two of its being 
fulfilled. For instance, suppose I say, there is 
going to be a very hot summer — it may be hot or 
it may be mild — the chance of fulfillment is rep- 
resented by the fraction one-half. This is the 
law of simple probability. If I introduce a sec- 
ond particular, I get into the region of compound 
probability. For instance, suppose I say, with- 
out any scientific law at the bottom of my con- 
jecture, that June fifteenth will be very hot. 
Here are two predictions; one is that there will 
be extreme heat; the other, that it will be on a 
certain day. Each prediction has a half chance 
of fulfillment; the compound probability is one- 
fourth, i. e,, there is one chance in four that both 
predictions will be verified. " A compound event 
has therefore a chance only in the product of its 
simple ratios." Every new feature added makes 
the fraction of probability smaller. 

In this prophecy, there is no vague general 
prediction; but a startling array of minute par- 
ticulars. Our Lord draws the portrait of the 
coming event in detail; time, place, persons, 



56 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

marked circumstances, all introducing peculiar 
features which leave no doubt as to our power to 
recognize the event, if it shall look like its por- 
trait. We find some twenty-five distinct predic- 
tions, here, and, on the law of compound prob- 
ability, the chance of their all meeting in one 
event, is as one in nearly twenty millions^ i. e. 
the fraction that represents the chance of prob- 
ability is one-half raised to its twenty-fourth 
power or about one twenty millionth chance! 

And yet every one of those features met in 
the destruction of Jerusalem and never have com- 
bined in any other event! And in selecting ex- 
amples, we omit all those features about whose 
exact meaning there is such doubt as to render 
them unsafe guides, in our investigation. We 
select only the plainer, bolder outlines which are 
so strikingly fulfilled as to leave no reasonable 
question of the correspondence. 

One other remark should be made before we 
enter on the closer study of this particular proph- 
ecy. There seems to be in Christ's words a 
reference not only to the destruction of the city, 
but to the end of the world; and so closely are 
these two great events linked in these utterances 
that it is a matter of doubt to Bible students, 
where He ceases to speak of the lesser and begins 
to speak of the greater. But need this seriously 
embarrass us in studying this question? There is 
a law of prophetic perspective, which all those 
who scan the prophecies must understand. In a 
landscape, a near range of hills may strikingly 
resemble, in outline, a far more distant range of 
mountains; so that, although there is vast differ- 
ence in their heights, and vast distance between 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 57 

their ranges, the same lines would define and des- 
cribe them both. So in prophecy; one outline 
may describe an event, near at hand, and another 
of greater magnitude on the far horizon. Many 
words may have designedly a double meaning, 
referring immediately to some nearer occurrence, 
and remotely to some other of which that is a 
type; a reference here on a minor scale and there 
on a major scale. Or we may call this the 
law of prophetic shadows, a coming event being 
foreshadowed by another, the outlines of both 
corresponding as do shadows and substance. 

But this is rather an argument for, than against, 
the divine inspiration of prophecy, since we have 
a double prediction, with a double verification. 
Surely if He speaks, to whom *'one day is as a 
thousand years and a thousand years as one day," 
we need not be surprised to find him using one 
outline for events, between which there lies a 
chasm of a thousand years; since to him such vast 
ages seem but as a watch in the night, and all 
time is but an insignificant tick in the great clock 
of eternity! 

One very marked proof of God's hand both 
in this prophecy and the history which fulfills it, 
is found in the very authorities, who record the 
fulfillment. The main account of the destruction 
of Jerusalem, it it had been written purposely to 
confirm the predictions of Christ, could not have 
been more exactly correspondent. Its author 
was the prince of the Jewish scholars of his day, 
and a Jewish general who, at first, stoutly resisted 
the Roman power, holding lotapata, the strong- 
hold of Galilee, for forty-seven days, against Ves- 
pasian; in 6j A. D., he was taken captive, and 



58 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

kept in bonds till Titus succeeded Vespasian in 
the control of the Jewish war. He was present 
at the siege of the city, and, after its downfall, 
went with Titus back to Rome, where he wrote 
his Annals; and Titus himself was so well pleased 
with the accuracy of his history that he gave it 
his formal approval and desired its publication. 
This historian was of course Josephus. He was 
certainly a competent witness, being very ac- 
complished as a man, and, about the person of the 
Roman commander, having every chance for close 
observation and exact information. Who will 
venture to accuse a Jew, who lived and died one 
of the straitest of the Pharisees, of partiality for 
the crucified Nazarene or his prophecies? God 
chose an enemy of the Christian faith to hand 
down to us a most minute record of the fulfillment 
of this most minute prophecy; so that the lead- 
ing though unconscious witness to Christ's pro- 
phetic character, is one whose testimony can- 
not be impeached by either Jews or Pagans! 
Josephus traced no connection betv/een the 
terrible events he recorded, and the words of the 
crucified Jesus; for he is constantly striving to find 
some reason for the fearful judgments which be- 
fell his land and nation.* 

Who are the other authorities, to be cited in 
proof that our Lord's prophecy was exactly ful- 
filled? Tacitus, a Roman and Pagan historian; 
and Gibbon, the prince of sceptics, the English 
historian, who, even while writing to prove that 
the success of Christianity might be accounted 

* Comp. Wars, 754, P. vi. v. iv. where he accounts for the 
ruin of the temple by the fact that the Jews had increased the 
area of its courts by taking in desecrated grounds, etc., etc. 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 59 

for by natural and secondary causes, was, despite 
himself, compelled to record facts which prove 
Christ a true prophet. Frederick the Great, on 
one occasion said to one of his marshals, who was 
a devout believer, ''Give me in one word, a proof 
of the truth of the Bible." *'The Jews," was the 
laconic, unanswerable reply. 

Harmonizing the gospels in one complete re- 
cord, we find twenty-five distinct predictions, in 
connection with the ruin of the Jewish capital. 
We group them for convenience into classes. 

I. Predictions as to pretenders to the character 
of Messiah, i. They would be many; 2. Would 
draw people to the desert, and secret chambers; 
3. Would deceive large numbers, etc. 

Before this time there had been no such thing 
in Jewish history. After the crucifixion, false 
Messiahs multiplied, such as Simon Magus, the 
Samarian sorcerer; Dositheus, another Samari- 
tan; Theudas, who promised to part the waters of 
Jordan like Elijah, and Josephus says, ''by such 
speeches deceived many. " The country was 
filled with impostors who deceived the people and 
persuaded them to follow into the wilderness, 
where they should see signs; a great multitude 
were led to the cloisters of the temple by false 
prophets. " 

II. Predictions of various signal calamities. 

I. Wars. At the time when Christ spake, 
peace prevailed both among the Jews and nations 
round about. Even when Caligula's order to set 
up his statue in the temple provoked resistance, 
the Jews could not believe that war was imminent. 
And yet Josephus says "the country was soon 
filled with violence; disorders prevailed in Alex- 



60 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

andria, Cesarea, Damascus, Tyre, Ptolemais and 
all over Syria. " The Jews rebelled against Rome, 
Italy was in convulsions and within two years four 
Roman emperors suffered death. 

2. Famine, pestilence, earthquake, etc. A 
famine of several years duration caused suffering 
in Judea, and there were famines in Italy, pesti- 
lences in Babylon, and only five years before the 
ruin of Jerusalem, in Rome. Earthquakes are 
recorded by Tacitus, Suetonius Philostratus; and 
Josephus gives account of them in Crete, Italy, 
Asia Minor, and one extraordinary, in Judea. 

3. Fearful sights and great signs from heaven. 
Josephus affirms that just before the war, '*a star 
resembling a sword stood over the city; and a 
comet for a whole year,'* that a great light shone 
round the altar; that the massive Eastern gate 
which it took twenty men to move, opened of its 
own accord; that chariots and troops were seen 
in the clouds at sunset; that there was an earth- 
quake and a supernatural voice at Pentecost; that 
a man named Jesus persisted in crying, 'Woe to 
the city,' etc. 

Tacitus records many prodigies that signaled 
the coming ruin. Armies appeared fighting in 
air; fire fell on the temples from the clouds; a loud 
voice proclaiming the removal of the gods from 
the temple, and a sound as of a departing host. 
About the reality and miraculous nature of these 
signs and sights and sounds, we cannot say; but 
it is enough that both Jew and Roman were im- 
pressed with them as real and miraculous. 

III. Signs within the kingdom of God. 

I. Persecution. Did not Saul make havoc of 
the church, before he was converted? Were not 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 61 

Peter and John before councils and in prisons? Was 
not Paul brought before kings, and he and Silas 
scourged and put in stocks for their faith's sake? 
Yet what wonderful power was given, before ad- 
versaries, to Stephen, to Peter, to Paul. None of 
the apostles seem to have died a natural death but 
John. About six years before Jerusalem fell, 
there was at Rome a terrible conflagration of 
eight days, of which Nero was believed to be the 
author; and to turn the wrath of the people from 
himself he put the blame of it upon the Christians; 
thereupon began a persecution which even Pagan 
pages blush to record. Nero drove his chariot to 
the imperial gardens between rows of Christian 
martyrs wrapped in their burning sheets of flame. 

2. Mutual betrayal. Tacitus says at first those 
who were seized confessed their sect, and then by 
their indication a great multitude were convicted. 

3. The gospel to be preached everywhere as 
a witness. What a work to be done inside of 
forty years — with no printing press to publish the 
gospel, and no rapid modes of transit to make 
travel easy; and foreign tongues to be learned! 
And yet it was done. Pentecost, with its gath- 
ered representatives from all nations, hearing and 
then going back to herald the good news; with 
its miraculous gift of tongues, doubtless fitting 
those first preachers to preach in foreign languages ; 
persecution, scattering the whole body of be- 
lievers, and setting them at work everywhere 
making disciples; Peter going to the dispersed 
Jewish tribes eastward — Paul to the Gentile world 
westward — our Lord's words were again fulfilled. 

Before the city fell, the gospel had been pro- 
claimed in lesser Asia, Greece and Italy — north 



62 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

to Scythia, south to Ethiopia, east to Parthia and 
India, and west to Spain and Britain. Tacitus 
says that in the time of Nero's persecution, the 
religion of Christ had spread over Judea and even 
through the Roman Empire, and numbered so 
many followers that a vast multitude was appre- 
hended and condemned to martyrdom. 
IV. Signs pertaining to the city itself. 

1. Jerusalem to be encompassed with armies. 

2. The eagles were to gather as around a 
carcase. When the Roman army drew nigh and 
surrounded the city, above every floating stand- 
ard rose the silver eagle. Banners distinguish an 
army — as its insignia; nations are known on sea 
and land by their flags. The Romans are through 
history so linked with this symbol that the Roman 
eagles are as celebrated as Rome herself. How fit- 
ting as an emblem ! The eagle or vulture is marked 
by three things, ''strength, swiftness, ferocity." 
How like vultures swooping down upon a carcase 
were the Roman hosts — so strong, so swift-mov- 
ing, so ferociously cruel! 

3. Destruction was to come as "lightning 
shineth from east to west." Now, it might have 
been expected, as the approach to Jerusalem was 
from the seacoast, that the Roman army would 
advance from west to east. Yet,-^s a fact, the 
approach was from Olivet, on the east, and toward 
the west; the lightning bolts of war which so soon 
shattered the fair capital first shot from war-clouds 
hovering on the eastern horizon, and their direc- 
tion was westward. 

4. "The abomination of desolation standing in 
the holy place" was a conspicuous token. Just 
what this means we may not decide, but only be- 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 63 

cause these words have more than one possible 
fulfillment. St. Matthew's record may, by the 
abomination of desolation, mean what Luke does 
by the desolating Pagan army, with idolatrous 
eagle standards, betokening desolation or destruc- 
tion, and standing on the holy ground — nay, ho- 
vering over the very sanctuary like unclean birds 
of prey. The Jews, holding every idol an ''abom- 
ination," besought a Roman general when he was 
leading his army towards Arabia through Judea, 
to go some other way, lest, by the very passage 
of a Pagan host with Pagan emblems, the land be 
defiled. Some things favor the reference of these 
words to an army of zealots and assassins invited 
by the Jews to defend them against the Romans, 
and who literally stood in the temple courts and 
profaned them; or, again, some think the ** abom- 
ination'' means a statute of the emperor set up by 
Pilate, or of Titus set up by Hadrian, in the holy 
place. 

5. A trench and an embankment were to be 
made around the city. Nothing seemed more 
improbable and useless. In all the previous sieges 
sustained by Jerusalem this had never been done. 
The situation of the city and the physical features 
of the country made it seem wasteful of time and 
strength. The valleys that wound about the city 
were a natural trench; the hills that round it rose 
were a natural embankment. Yet Titus, against 
the counsel of his chief men, actually built a wall 
and trench five miles in circumference around the 
doomed capital; and the Jewish historian describes 
the precise circuit. 

6. Great tribulation was to mark the siege. 
Hear Josephus: *' No other city ever suffered 

such miseries, nor was ever a generation more 



64 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

fruitful in wickedness from the beginning of the 
world. It appears that the misfortunes of all men 
from the beginning of the world, if compared to 
these of the Jews, are not so considerable. The 
multitude who perished exceeded all the destruc- 
tions that man or God ever brought on the 
world." 

It was at the Passover, when the nation 
thronged its sacred capital. Nearly three mil- 
lions are estimated to have been in the city. The 
famine was so severe that hunger drove men to 
eat sandal straps, leather girdles, straw. A 
mother brought to the maddened assassins who 
were ready to do any violence to get food, a 
half-devoured child, and bade them share with 
her the lamb she had made ready! As Titus saw 
the dead thrown over the walls into the valleys, 
by hundreds and by thousands, he lifted his 
hands to heaven to protest before God that all 
this was not his doing. Josephus reckons that 
130,000 perished and 97,000 were sold into 
slavery. 

7. The actual destruction of the city. 

It was to be leveled to the ground. 

Josephus tells us that three massive walls of 
great strength encompassed the city; and the 
garrison was ten times, in number, tlie besiegers. 
Think of laying such walls even with the ground! 
Yet, at the last, orders were given to " raze the 
very foundations," and nothing was left but three 
towers, and what little wall was needed, as a shel- 
ter to the Roman garrison, and as a specimen of 
the strength of the defences, which Roman power 
had laid low. The whole circumference was so 
thoroughly laid even with the ground that nothing 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 65 

was left to show it had been inhabited. Titus said: 
*' We have certainly had God for our helper in 
this war. He has ejected the Jews out of these 
strongholds; for what could men or machines do 
toward throwing down such fortifications as these ! " 
The hope of finding hid treasure moved the Ro- 
man army to tear up the very ground, till sewers 
and aqueducts were uncovered, and a plowshare 
was used to tear up the foundations of the tem- 
ple, thus literally fulfilling the prophecy of Micah 
( 750 B. C.) ''Jerusalem shall be ploughed as an 
heap. " 

The temple was to be included in this awful 
destruction. The prophecy of its demolition is 
the first link in this chain of predictions. After 
our Lord uttered in the temple his lament over 
his people wh.o would not be gathered under his 
wings, he said: " Behold your house is left unto 
you desolate!" and immediately departed from 
the devoted sanctuary. As they left it, his disci- 
ples, struck with the strange prophecy that such 
a house could ever become desolate, called his at- 
tention, " See what manner of stones and what 
buildings are here," i,e,, structures even then go- 
ing on to completion. But he said, with more 
particular utterance, " There shall not be left here 
one stone upon another that shall not be thrown 
down. " 

This prediction was very unhkely of fulfill- 
ment. 

((2.) The walls enclosed over nineteen acres; 
the east front rose to a height of one-sixth of a 
mile from the vale, and immense -stones, some of 
them 65 feet by 8 by 10 wrought into its massive 
structure. 



66 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

(^. ) It was beautiful and sacred, a monu- 
ment both of art and worship. It rose, Hke 
a mount of gold and snow. Its carved portals, 
alabaster porticoes, and golden sanctuary, won 
the most rapturous praises from even Pagans. If 
vandals and barbarians, in the sack of Athens and 
Rome, would spare the Parthenon and Pantheon, 
what might not be expected from the soldiers of 
the first and grandest of Empires! Would they 
not spare a structure which the proverb said, " If 
you had not seen, you had seen nothing beau- 
tiful?" 

(c.) It was built by Herod, a creature of Ro- 
man power and patronage, who was more loyal to 
the conquering nation than to those with whom he 
was connected, as himself a descendant of Isaac. 
And he was a deferential and obsequious Roman 
in spirit, who built cities to perpetuate Caesar's 
name, and who tried to make Jerusalem a second 
Rome. To prostrate Herod's fane, was to lay one 
of Rome's very master-works in ruin. 

(d.) Auvd then Titus was mild, humane, cul- 
tured, a commander who would not be likely to 
favor it, who in fact forbade such wanton destruc- 
tion. The fires were once put out by his orders, 
but rekindled when his back was turned. 

V. Christ's predictions, however^ assured the 
safety of his disciples. ** There shall not an hair 
of your head perish. " 

The fact is remarkable enough that in such 
universal slaughter not one disciple should perish; 
but more remarkable that it was after the besieg- 
ing army should surround the city that they were 
to have opportunity to withdraw. What a strange 
signal for flight, when the hosts were already cut- 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 67 

ting off every escape! And yet this was Christ's 
token to his faithful followers that desolation was 
nigh, imminent. They should yet have chance to 
flee, if done with haste; there would be opportu- 
nity, but it would be short. 

Hear again the Jewish annalist: *' Cestius 
Gallus, after beginning siege, mysteriously with- 
drew, and without any reason in the world, and 
many embraced this opportunity to depart; a 
great multitude fled to the mountains." At this 
crisis, as we learn from church historians of the 
first century, all the followers of Christ took refuge 
in the mountains of Pella, beyond the Jordan, and 
there is no record of one single Christian perish- 
ing in the siege! As soon as the armies returned, 
the city was surrounded by a wall, and all hope of 
flight was now cut off. 

VI. Prophecies respecting subsequent history. 

I. The doom of the Jews; they should fall 
by the edge of the sword, and be led captive into 
all nations. 

Even before the city fell, an immense number 
of deserters, falling into hands of the besiegers, 
were sold with their wives and children. Nearly 
100,000 from Jerusalem alone, were sold into 
bondage. 6,000 choice young men from Tarichea 
were sent to Nero, and 30,000 from the same 
place sold beside. The tall and fine looking were 
borne to Rome to grace the triumphal entry of 
Titus: many sent to the public works in Egypt; 
many more distributed through the provinces in- 
to all nations, to be slain by gladiators or by wild 
beasts. And so it has been from that time until 
now. The sword is not yet sheathed, nor are 
the chains of their captivity broken. 



68 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

2. The doom of the city: To *'be trodden 
down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gen- 
tiles be fulfilled." 

Here are three particulars: desolation, by the 
Gentiles, and continued until the Gentile world is 
brought to the knowledge of the gospel and the 
Jews are reclaimed. 

To this day, the city has been trodden down 
by the Gentiles; and though the Jews have made 
desperate efforts to get control of their ancient 
capital they have never been re-established yet. 
About 64 years after their expulsion under Titus, 
the city was partly rebuilt by the Emperor Had- 
rian, and a Roman colony settled there. On 
pain of death Jews were forbidden to enter, for- 
bidden even to look from a distance on the city. 
The suspicion that the holy place was to be de- 
filed by idol images provoked them to revolt, but 
they were crushed with awful slaughter. Again, 
in the time of Constantine, they made a vain at- 
tempt to regain possession. At last they felt 
sure of success; for they had permission from 
Rome to rebuild. Julian, the apostate, bound to 
break down faith in this very prophecy, backing 
up Jewish zeal with Roman arms, wealth and 
power, undertook to restore the temple and ritual 
and plant round it a Jewish colony. x 

To show how strangely this project was frus- 
trated, let us quote Gibbon.* ''The vain and 
ambitious mind of Julian might aspire to restore 
the ancient glory of the temple of Jerusalem. As 
the Christians were firmly persuaded that a sen- 
tence of everlasting destruction had been pro- 
nounced against the whole fabric of the Mosaic 

^11:436. 9. 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 69 

law, the imperial sophist would have converted 
the success of his undertaking into a specious ar- 
gument against the faith of prophecy and the 
truth of revelation. He resolved to erect without 
delay on the commanding eminence of Moriah, a 
stately temple which might eclipse the splendor 
of the church of the Resurrection on the adjacent 
hill of Calvary; to establish an order of priests 
and to invite a numerous colony of Jews. At 
the call of their great deliverer, the Jews from all 
provinces of the empire assembled on the holy 
mountain of their fathers; and their insolent tri- 
umph alarmed and exasperated the Christian in- 
habitants of Jerusalem. The desire of rebuilding 
the temple has in every age been the ruling 
passion of the children of Israel. In this propit- 
ious moment the men forgot their avarice and the 
women their delicacy; spades and pickaxes of 
silver were provided by the vanity of the rich, and 
the rubbish was transported in mantles of silk 
and purple. Every purse was opened in liberal 
contributions, every hand claimed a share in the 
pious labor; and the commands of a great mon- 
arch were executed by the enthusiasm of a whole 
people. 

*' But the Christians entertained a natural and 
pious expectation, that in this contest the 
honor of religion would be vindicated by some 
signal miracle. An earthquake, a whirlwind 
and a fiery eruption which overturned and scat- 
tered the new foundations of the temple are at- 
tested, with some variations, by contemporaneous 
and respectable evidence. This public event is 
described by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, in an 
epistle to the Emperor Theodosius; by the elo- 



70 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

quent Chrysostom who might appeal to the mem- 
ory of the elder part of his congregation at 
Antioch; and by Gregory Nazianzen, who pub- 
lished his account of the miracle before the ex- 
piration of the same year. The last of these 
writers boldly declared that this praeternatural 
event was not disputed by the infidels, and this 
assertion strange as it may seem is confirmed by 
the unexceptionable testimony of Ammianus 
Marcellinus/' This philosophic soldier records, 
that "whilst Alypius urged with vigor and dili- 
gence the execution of the work, horrible balls of 
fire, breaking out near the foundations, with fre- 
quent and reiterated attacks, rendered the place 
from time to time inaccessible to these scorched 
and blasted workmen ; and the victorious element, 
continuing in this manner obstinately and abso- 
lutely bent, as it were, to drive them always to a 
distance, the undertaking was abandoned." "Such 
authority,*' adds Gibbon, "should satisfy a be- 
lieving, and most astonish an incredulous mind." 
In a note. Gibbon attempts to explain all this by 
a long confinement, in the grounds beneath the 
temple ruins, of inflammable air, exploded by the 
torches of exploring workmen, etc. 

Jerusalem has emphatically been trodden 
down of Gentiles. Not to speak of- the destruc- 
tion, when Pagan hosts trampled it under foot 
with the iron hoof of war, for sixty-four years it 
was occupied only by a Roman garrison. Had- 
rian's partial rebuilding was designed as desecra- 
tion. He called it ^lia Capitolina (a name 
compounded of his own family title ^lius, and 
Capitolina, a name applied to Jupiter from his 
temple on Mt. Capitolinus). To Jupiter Capitol- 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 71 

inus he consecrated the new city and built a tem- 
ple to that Pagan God over the sepulchre of Christ. 
He set up a statue of Venus on Calvary — and the 
marble image of a swine — the peculiar abomina- 
tion of the Jew, over the gate that opened toward 
Bethlehem. 

The sacred site remained thus more than des- 
olate, and known by its pagan name till Helena, 
the mother of Constantine, made a pilgrimage to 
it in 326. Justinian, in the sixth century, repaired 
and enriched its churches, founded convents, and 
built a church to the Virgin on Mt. Moriah. But 
all this, though acceptable to Pope-dom was pro- 
fanation to the Jews: the city was still trodden 
down of Gentiles! In 610 A. D. it was stormed 
and greatly damaged by the Persians, who for a 
short time held it. 

In 637, under Caliph Omar, the Saracens took 
possession, and for more than four centuries the 
Arabian, Turkish or Egyptian Mohammedans 
continued to tread down the doomed capital. In 
1073, the Selzookian Turks took it, whose cruel- 
ties to Christian pilgrims provoked the first cru- 
sade; and July 15, 1099, the crusaders taking it 
by storm, made it the seat of a Christian king- 
dom, allowing only Christians there. In 11 87 it 
was conquered by the Egyptian Sultan Saladin. 
For upwards of half a century it was like a toy 
tossed to and fro, between Christians and Turks, 
till 1244, since which date it has remained under 
Moslem sway, and the very fact of a mosque, 
crowned with a crescent, rising where the temple 
stood, is enough to show how profanely even 
Moriah is still trampled under foot of Gentiles. 

We appeal to every candid mind, whether the 



72 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

continued desolation of Jerusalem is not one of 
the historic marvels, we had almost said miracles. 
Consider the remarkable preservation of the Jew- 
ish nation — though scattered everywhere, still 
keeping their national traits and unity as a peo- 
ple, mingling but not mixing with other peoples 
— consider their religious tenacity and zeal for the 
ancient city and demolished temple — consider 
their great numbers and vast wealth, one family 
of Jewscontrolling enough capital to buy all Judea 
— consider that if any one thought and desire en- 
grosses the Jewish mind it is to be re-established 
in the city of David — and can any human philoso- 
phy account for the fact that for eighteen centur- 
ies this desolation lasts! 

VII. Our Lord's prediction limited the open- 
ing act of this drama of the ages to the lifetime 
of the generation then living. 

The days of our years are three score years 
and ten, and it was seventy years after Jesus was 
born when Jerusalem was destroyed: or if we 
take thirty-five years as the average life time of a 
generation, it was just about so long after these 
words were spoken when their awful fulfillment 
began. 

VIII. Christ foretold these as days of ven- 
geance (Luke xxi: 22), i. ^., of avenging or 
retributive justice. All should be plainly the 
judgment of God upon the sin of Christ's rejec- 
tion and crucifixion. An attentive student of 
history cannot but see God in history. There is 
at times such a striking, startling correspondence 
between the form of sin and the form and even 
time of its punishment, that men are constrained 
to say like Pharaoh's magicians: ''This is the 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 73 

FINGER OF god!" If the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem is to be recognized not as an ordinary calam- 
ity but a peculiar interposition of God, in just 
visitation of the crime committed by the Jews in 
crucifying his own Son, there will be some fea- 
tures about it which plainly exhibit its retributive 
character. How is it? 

The Jews put Jesus to death at the passover; 
at the very season of that annual festival, thou- 
sands of them were put to death. 

They clamored for the release of a robber and 
murderer that Jesus might be slain; they became 
the prey of robbers and murderers, in the siege. 

They crucified Jesus, outside the walls; and 
outside the walls they suffered crucifixion in such 
multitudes that room was wanting for crosses, and 
crosses for bodies. 

They mocked and derided their Messiah, even 
as he stood helpless before the tribunal or hung 
in agony on the cross; they were crucified in 
every conceivable posture, affixed to the crosses 
in modes so various that it was as though ''done 
in jest." 

They reckoned Christ, the faultless one, a 
malefactor, and their own dead bodies were flung 
over the walls like the despised carcases of crim- 
inals refused an honorable burial. 

To convict Christ, they procured false wit- 
nesses, who perverted his prophecy of his own 
death and resurrection into a declaration of the 
destruction of their temple; and the perjured tes- 
timony proved unconsciously prophetic — the tem- 
ple was destroyed. From Olivet, Christ uttered 
the sad prediction, and from Olivet moved the 
flock of ^eagles' to pounce on the carcase. 



74 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Pilate sat in the court of the castle of Antony 
to condemn Jesus to death; and from that very 
point was made the last and successful assault on 
the temple and city. 

They intimidated Pilate by pretending great 
loyalty to Caesar, whom they claimed as their 
only king; and under his imperial sway their 
nation was broken into fragments by the very 
hosts of Caesar. 

They rejected the true Messiah with his 
mighty works as well as words; and lent them- 
selves as silly dupes to the control of Messianic 
pretenders and false prophets. 

When Pilate declared Christ innocent and 
sought to release him, they assumed all responsi- 
bility, saying, 'his blood be on us and on our chil- 
dren,' and that very generation gave their blood 
for his. Never was there any imprecation more 
prophetic. 

An individual may have his retribution be- 
yond this life, for he lives beyond this life. A 
nation, however, is a temporal state, and its sins 
must be avenged, if at all, in this world. "Insti- 
tutions are mortal: men immortal: the historical 
temporal judgment is of institutions and of or- 
ganisms: the final judgment is of individuals, 
each one giving account of himself unto God.'* 

Can any candid mind consider the crime 
of the Jews and the calamities that followed ex- 
actly in accord with prophetic predictions, and 
see in these marvellous correspondences no sign 
that God had their sin in mind in bringing on that 
very generation such pathetic but poetic retribu- 
tion? 

This wonderful witness to the divine inspira- 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 75 

tion of the gospels also attests the divine charac- 
ter of Christ, whose own words were: "And now 
I have told you before it come to pass that when 
it is come to pass ye may believe." He claimed 
Divine Sonship and Messiahship: and to verify 
his claim, uttered a prophecy so minute that no 
chance coincidence can explain it. How may we 
evade conviction? 

As Porphyry did with Daniel — even so we 
may do with Christ, deny his prophetic character, 
make both the prophecy and the history the fair 
masks covering the most hideous and devilish 
plot ever devised to ensnare the credulity of 
men. We may, in other words, coolly and sneer- 
ingly say, "the prophecy was never written till 
Jerusalem was in ruins." But when men use such 
an argument as this in answer to such a mighty 
array of facts and truths, it must be because they 
feel their cause to be desperate. They violate all 
the common laws of historic criticism and evi- 
dence, for the sake of NOT being convinced. For 
no adequate motive or reason can be assigned for 
this wholesale and reckless denial of historical 
testimony, but a determination to oppose the 
Christian religion. Here is the argument, un- 
masked: "If this prophecy was recorded before 
the event, Jesus Christ must have been a genuine 
prophet. We are not willing to accept him as 
such. Therefore these words were not written 
until after the fall of Jerusalem!" 

The same methods will make havoc of all his- 
tory and all testimony, leaving us certain of noth- 
ing — all the facts of the past become the fancies 
of dreamers, or the fictions of liars. We are asked 
to escape the credulity of faith by running into 



76 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

the trap of more credulous doubt and denial — for 
the sake of disbelieving Christianity, to believe 
that men wrote the most pure and faultless records 
known, full of the sublimest moral teachings, and 
died rather than renounce their faith; and yet 
were only trying to get others to believe a cruci- 
fied and dead traitor to be yet alive — slyly manu- 
facturing prophecies of events already passed, in 
order to prop up his claims to divine honors! 

When Mephistopheles, in Faust, is asked his 
name, he says he is the *' spirit of negation '* or 
denial! Nothing is easier than to deny what you 
cannot disprove; and proof, if it had on Mercury's 
talaria, or the seven-league boots of yore, never 
could overtake the spirit of negation. Suppose a 
case: an astronomer announces to-day that he 
has by means of a new instrument greatly superior 
to the telescope in power, found inhabitants in the 
moon. You deny it; pronounce it impossible, 
because there is no atmosphere in the moon, etc. 
But Prof. Watson or Peters has said so. You 
reply, '* I don't believe it." It is proved to you 
that he said so. " I don't believe he is a thor- 
oughly competent astronomer. " It is proved that 
he is. '' I don't believe that he is honest; he is 
fooling the scientific world; it's a hoax.'* It is 
proved to you that he is incapable of trickery. 
" Well, he is insane." It is proved he is sane. 
" Well, his new instrument fools him," etc. How 
long would it take for truth to come up to such 
reckless denial? Yet men affect surprise that be- 
lievers do not run after all the various forms of 
denial which impeach the truth of the Bible! 
Infidelity begins this race by a stride so monstrous 
as to ask us to believe that a man that could write 



THE RUIN OF JERUSALEM. 77 

such a book as " Daniel " or the '' gospels " could 
be a perjured hypocrite, and attempt to concoct a 
fraud, beside which Jo Smith's Mormon Bible is 
nothing. 

This method of wholesale denial is one of the 
conspicuous weapons of modern scepticism. 
Nothing is easier than to discredit a fact or a 
truth; to confound denial with disproof, and to 
substitute unanswerable sneers or cavils for an- 
swerable arguments. We hold up such a prophecy, 
and side by side its corresponding fulfillment. A 
skeptic denies the fulfillment. If we prove the 
correspondence between prediction and event, he 
denies the prophecy; it was not written till after 
the event. We bring witnesses to show that the 
prediction preceded the event; he denies the 
truth or competency of the witnesses, claims they 
were mistaken; or, like Hume and Strauss, as- 
sumes miracles of knowledge or of power to be 
impossible, and asserts that no testimony can 
establish what is impossible! All argument be- 
comes impossible with such antagonists. Bacon 
says: " I cannot reason with a man unless we can 
find a common footing in agreement on first 
principles.'' 

We have promised our reader to deal with this 
theme calmly, as a surgeon in the dissecting-room 
uses the lancet and scalpel, with scientific steadi- 
ness of hand. Perhaps we have not done it, but 
it is because we cannot. The surgeon may be 
pardoned if his head is hot and his hand trembles 
as he uncovers the vital organs of his own child 
to discover disease, especially if it is a living child 
and not a dead body which he touches with the 
keen blade! 



78 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

The gospel of Christ we cannot discuss with- 
out deep feeling. All we have, or hope, in this 
world and the next is bound up with it; he who 
touches, even with irreverence, this sacred faith, 
wounds us in the quick of our being ; he who in- 
sults and assaults it, thrusts his steel into our 
very vitals. And it is a mystery that any man, 
whatever his own creed may be, can take delight 
in demolishing faith in others, and even ruthlessly 
blaspheming a name that is above every name to 
them. It is perhaps the mark of current infidelity 
that it makes its disciples malignant. Were one 
speaking to an audienceof Mussulmans, why shock 
them by insulting and blasphemous allusions to 
their Koran and Prophet? Let him rather calmly 
conduct them to a better sacred Book and sacred 
Person if he can. It is no sign that our faith is 
feeble or our will weak, if, when a man publicly 
tears the Scriptures to tatters and spits in the face 
of the Christian's God, and bows in mock homage 
before the crucified One, we shrink and turn 
pale. The believer cannot be indifferent to any- 
thing which concerns Jesus of Nazareth. 

We have pointed to the burning bush of pro- 
phecy with its many branches, wonderfully bud- 
ding and blossoming into historic events. Well 
may we remove the shoes from our feet; the place 
where we stand is holy ground; that glory is the 
glory of God. If the reader sees no radiant light, 
let him ask himself whether he is willing TO SEE. 



CHAPTER IV. 



MIRACLES: ARE THEY POSSIBLE AND PROBABLE? 

** Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by 
miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the 
midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. " — Acts ii: 22. 

What is a miracle? Definitions lie at the basis 
of all discussions, for they define or limit the 
ground which argument is to cover; they set 
bounds within which we both keep ourselves and 
hold our opponents. This is of as much conse- 
quence in debate as it would be in a contest 
between athletes to settle the rules of honorable 
championship. 

Much importance attaches to a definition. 
Carelessly to accept a false premise may compel 
us to admit a false conclusion. A whole building 
is made unsafe by a treacherous foundation. If 
we begin with a wrong or faulty definition, we 
unsettle our whole argument. 

If a miracle be defined as a " natural impossi- 
bility," how shall we meet those who, like Hume 
and Strauss, first assume miracles to be impossi- 
ble, and then ask triumphantly whether any testi- 
mony can establish an impossibility? It is very 
plausible to start by assuming a miracle to be 
a violation of natural laws; next, assert the uni- 
formity of those laws as a fact and a necessity to 
the very stability of the system of nature; next, 
to argue the absurdity and impossiblity of volun- 



80 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

tary violations of those laws by the very Creator 
who fixed them as ruling forces; and so conclude 
that no testimony can establish a miracle. 

A miracle, in a Scripture sense, is simply this: 
A wonder and a sign. Its sole use is this, that 
God appeals to it as a sign of His power. This 
is the reason why it must also be a wonder. 
Were there nothing in it that strikes the mind as 
out of the common course of nature, or beyond the 
power of man, it could not be used by God to 
produce the impression and conviction of His 
presence and power. It need not be on the 
grandest scale; it need not call God's power into 
its fullest exercise; that might be a waste. All 
that is necessary is that the act or occurrence shall 
be sufficiently wonderful to show that God's hand 
is in it, and its end is accomplished. So must it 
be wonderful, as out of the common course, that 
it may arrest attention. 

A miracle must combine both these elements. 
It may be that you either mark a wonder which 
is not a sign, or a sign which is not a wonder; but 
neither is a miracle, because it does not meet both 
conditions. For example, sunshine is a wonder, 
and no familiarity with the daily mystery of the 
morning and the evening can take away the ele- 
ment of the marvelous. A vast ^lobe, fifteen 
hundred thousand times the volume of the earth, 
gives to it life and heat and motion, at a distance 
of more than ninety millions of miles. If that 
bush in the desert of Horeb was wonderful, which 
burned with fire and was not consumed, what 
shall we say of a sphere of fire which six thousand 
years of unceasing combustion has not even re- 
duced in size! Yet we do not call the sun a mira- 



MIRACLES. 81 

cle, for God does not appeal to it as a special sign 
to confirm His word or show His power in con- 
nection with human agency. The rainbow is a 
sign, to which God appeals, as a token of his cov- 
enant with man that the flood of waters shall not 
again deluge the earth. Yet we do not call that 
a miracle, for it is not out of the common course 
of nature, and does not arrest the attention of 
men as showing a power above nature. 

Let us then fix firmly in mind that when any 
occurrence is sufficiently out of the natural or 
usual order to indicate a sure interposition of a 
power above nature and above man; and when 
God points us to such an occurrence as a sign that 
He is speaking by man, we have both conditions 
necessary to a miracle. It must be above the 
power both of nature and of man. Nature repre- 
sents blind, mechanical force, acting without intel- 
ligence. All nature's operations are marvelous, 
but not miraculous, for they move in the line of 
fixed laws. Man represents intelligent, intellect- 
ual force; all man's operations are marvelous, but 
not miraculous, for they move in the line of fixed 
laws — laws of mind as well as of matter. In order 
to a miracle, a marvel which shall show the power 
of God, there must be some proof of the inter- 
vention of an influence that is neither limited by 
the laws of matter nor by the laws of mind. 

How will such proof or sign be likely to be 
furnished, if at all? There can be but one an- 
swer: There will be an interruption of those fixed 
laws which we have seen to guide the movements 
both of matter and mind. The objection urged 
against miracles, as an interruption of fixed laws, 
is not well taken. If there be a miracle at all, it 



82 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

must invade the fixed order; otherwise, however 
it might impress as curious or even marvelous, it 
would become no sign of a presence or power 
greater than those forces which obey the fixed 
order, and which we call mechanical, because, 
like the movements of a machine, they cannot act 
outside of fixed limits. 

Suppose an ignorant and superstitious savage 
suddenly, as in sleep, transported to the very 
centres of the highest civilization! He stands be- 
side a railroad track, and the iron horse rushes 
by. He looks with amazement at the rapid revo- 
lution of the driving. wheels, and the majestic 
movement of that symbol of mechanical omnipo- 
tence. He falls down to adore, but you arrest 
him. You tell him that is not a God; it is simply 
a machine; it moves according to a fixed law, and 
within the limits fixed by the rails, which also 
represent law. He cannot believe it. How shall 
you convince him? There is but one way. Show 
him that there is a power above the engine that 
can change its course; invade what appears to be 
a fixed order and a uniform law of its motion; 
and, if he have mind enough to appreciate your 
method of proof, he sees that the engine is a ma- 
chine, and nothing more. You show^ him how, 
by the hand of the engineer, its niotion is ar- 
rested; how, by the hand of the switch tender, 
its very track is changed at will; how, by the 
turn-table, its direction is changed; how, by 
quenching its fires, it can be made motionless and 
inert. Now, mark, you have given him a sign 
that some power greater than the engine is pres- 
ent, by interfering with its ordinary and uniform 
course. A very ignorant man knows that it is of 



MIRACLES. 8a 

the nature of a moving body to move on in one 
direction. When a moving body actually stops, 
backs, turns about — when all its ordinary move- 
ments are reversed, we conclude there is a power 
above the mechanical — and we call that power 
intelligence. If God gives us a similar sign of 
His presence, it must be in such a way as to show 
a power, not only superior to blind mechanism, 
but even to human intelligence; and that can be 
done only by some process which seems to reverse 
the ordinary laws both of matter and mind. We 
say, "seems to reverse," for it is not necessary 
that any law be either violated or suspended: let 
it only be plain that the divine engineer is guiding 
the engine, to convince me that he is present; 
and my need is met, though I may not understand 
the complex system of laws which has a place for 
the miracle. 

Let us take note that, after all, in even a mira- 
cle there may in fact be no real invasion of the 
order of the universe. When the engine backs, 
wheels about, changes track, it as truly obeys 
law as when it moved on straightforward; there 
is, however, an intelligence guiding the machine, 
and bringing a new law to bear upon its motion. 
How do we know that a miracle invades or inter- 
rupts nature's fixed order? What if it be the 
engineer, the intelligence of the Creator, simply 
bringing a new set of laws to bear upon the uni- 
verse? 

When the secret things are revealed, we shall 
doubtless find that there are in this universe of 
matter and of mind two planes for the operation 
of law. One is the ordinary plane, the lower 
level, where everything moves in a uniform line 



84 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and method; another, the extraordinary plane, 
the higher level, where the special intervention of 
the engineer introduces, for wise reasons, a new 
force not commonly in operation. 

It may be safe to take still more positive po- 
sitions than these. Every act, by which intelli- 
gence voluntarily interrupts the working of me- 
chanical law, has in it the essence of the miracu- 
lous, on a smaller scale. For example, you 
throw a ball through the air. I put out my hand 
and catch it. It would have continued to fly, 
till another mechanical law which we call gravita- 
tion, bringing it to the earth, had arrested its mo- 
tion; but a different agent has been brought to 
bear; a voluntary, intelligent force suddenly puts 
forth its energy and controls the working of a 
blind, mechanical force. There is no disorder in- 
troduced into creation, but there is a new power 
at work, which shows an intelligent agent. . 

What does God, in a miracle? Let us sup- 
pose it literally true that the sun stood still while 
Joshua fought the Amorites, and that this is not 
a poetic description, from ''the book of Jasher," 
of a prolonging of daylight. The mechanical 
law would require the continued rotation of the 
earth on its axis, but there comes in the vol- 
untary, intelligent force to control th^ working of 
the blind and mechanical, and show the presence 
of the divine agency. Is not this occurrence like 
the other, but on a grander scale suited to prove 
the power of God? 

Lazarus died and was buried. The operation 
of mechanical laws would bring decay; but a new 
force, voluntary and intelligent, controls the me- 
chanical, and there is no decay. At the word of 



MIRACLES. 85 

the Son of God the breath returns. Man cannot 
restore the dead; yet he can revive a body out of 
which breath has fled, where there is no pulse, 
and where even animal heat is scarce left, as in the 
recovery of one who has been drowned. The liv- 
ing embraces the lifeless, warmth goes from one 
body to the other, breath passes from one to the 
other. All this could not be accomplished by 
mere mechanical force. Leave that body to the 
operation of natural law, and there will be no 
breath nor pulse. But bring a voluntary, intelli- 
gent force to bear in time, and the decree of 
death, ordained by mechanical law, is reversed. 
We do not bring the resurrection of Lazarus 
down to the level of the resuscitation of one who, 
after apparent death from drowning, is brought 
to life. Our object is to show that, in our ordin- 
ary experience, the will of an intelligent being 
arrests and reverses the action of mechanical law, 
proving the presence of a superior agency, with- 
out any violation of the real order of nature. And 
may not a miracle simply be, on a scale suited to 
the grandeur of God's activity, the will of an in- 
finite intelligence, arresting and reversing the 
action of mechanical law, proving the presence 
of a superior and supreme being. 

Dr. William M. Taylor has happily illustrated 
the consistency of miracles with the uniformity of 
law by a reference to the Holly system of water- 
works. The engine, which furnishes the pressure 
for the water supply, is so arranged that the de- 
mand regulates the supply. According to the 
rapidity of the discharge at the hydrant, is the 
rapidity with which the pumping engine works. 
Then, when a fire in the town subjects the appa- 



86 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

ratus to a very unusual tax, a signal in the engine 
room, acting automatically, causes the engineer 
to gear on some reserve power, always ready for 
use; and so, even in an emergency, there is pro- 
vision for ample supply. And yet all this is a 
mere triumph of mechanics. Now let the ordin- 
ary working of the machinery represent the com- 
mon course of nature: and the intelligent, per- 
sonal intervention of the engineer, in an exigency, 
the personal interposition of the sovereign of the 
universe in the crises of affairs; and you have 
almost an analogy, refuting the objection on a 
scientific basis. 

Lacordaire, in his conferences, finely satirizes 
this modern scientific doctrine of the helplessness 
of God. A woman cries out from the slums of 
Paris for light and help. God answers, ** I would 
gladly help you but I cannot. I have established 
a fixed order of things and I have limited, myself 
to its working. Prayer is of no use, you must 
submit to the fixed order." 

If this view of miracles be sound and sensible 
it knocks away the prop from the main objection 
urged against miracles. Sceptical persons say: 
*'I can't believe that God would first make laws 
for nature and set them in motion, and then go 
on and violate His own laws. What would be the 
use of making them, if He himself would break 
them or so easily suspend or set them aside?" 
We meet the objector on the very threshold, and 
honestly dispute his position. Is a miracle a 
violation of the laws of nature, or is it only such 
an interference with the established course of 
things, as infallibly shows us the presence and 
the action of a supernatural power? 



MIRACLES. 87 

I have a watch here — when wound up it runs 
straight forward until it needs winding. By a 
fixed law, in conformity with the very structure 
of the time piece, its hands move only in one di- 
rection, while they move at all. Yet, when I find 
that it is too fast I move the hands backward; I 
interrupt the usual movement, but I violate no 
law. The watch could not have turned back its 
own hands and corrected itself, bnt a superior in- 
telligence interferes for a proper end. Have I 
suspended or violated any law? or have I simply 
brought a new law to bear which, though not in 
ordinary operation, is entirely consistent with the 
laws which govern the movements of the watch ? 
As I examine more minutely into the structure of 
this delicate piece of mechanism, I observe a re- 
markable fact: the maker of this watch has made 
provision for just such a reversal of that law^ by 
which both minute and hour hands move only 
forward. He has provided for a backward move- 
ment, when the intelligent owner chooses, with- 
out any interference with this exquisite arrange- 
ment: while I turn back the hands I disturb no 
wheel, and there is not even one tick the less: and 
yet, left to itself, the hands of that watch never 
could change their direction of movement. Who 
is competent to say that, when God reverses the 
hands on the great dial of nature, He has made 
no provision for such reversal? 

n. If we may concede the possibility, may 
we not also, the probability of miracles? 

These two questions are by no means the 
same, even in substance. Many things are possi- 
ble that are not probable. God has power to do 
things, without number, which he never did and 



88 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

never will do. He never acts without a reason. 
He does not waste power by useless expenditure 
of omnipotence. If, however, there is such a use 
to be made of miracles as amply justifies the put- 
ting forth of such power we are prepared to find 
them actually used. 

In the natural world we find wonderful marks 
of design. Wherever there is a socket there is a 
ball to fit it and make the joint complete. If you 
discover any apparent lack, something wanting 
to render nature's arrangement and adjustment 
perfect, further search will always reveal some- 
thing else exactly adapted to supply the want. 

Years ago, in the astronomical world, it was 
found that certain changes are taking place which 
threaten the very existence of the order of the 
universe. For example: the orbits of the planets 
are inclined to each other by an angle which does 
not remain uniform. From the earliest ages the 
inclination of the earth's equator to the ecliptic 
has been decreasing, say about half a second a 
year. Should this decrease continue, in about 
85,000 years the equator and ecliptic would coin- 
cide, — the order of nature would be entirely 
changed, and the succession of seasons would give 
place to one unchanging spring. But in fact, by 
and by this decrease will reach its limit, and the 
angle of inclination will then increase, and so the 
seasons will keep revolving, and seed time and 
harvest time shall not fail. God has provided a 
compensation for what at first seemed a disturbing 
cause, and as by the chronometer balance in a 
model time piece, regularity of movement is 
insured, in the end. The action of this compen- 
sating law may consume two hundred milleniums. 



MIRACLES. 89 

but this shows nothing more than the vast scale 
on which this machine is constructed. 

So as to the changes in the angles under which 
the planetary orbits are inclined toward each other. 
Should these inclinations increase, the stability of 
the system would be impossible ; order would give 
place to disorder, and the cosmos finally return to 
chaos. 

Even such men as Humboldt have been misled 
into the prediction of a universal catastrophe. In 
his Cosmos he predicts the end of all things as 
surely coming, however remote from our day. 
The balance would be destroyed, wheels become 
dislodged, and the whole grand mechanism grind 
itself to atoms by its own collisions. Even 
astronomers and philosophers stood aghast at the 
prospect of such a final wreck and ruin. But the 
eyes of science continued to watch and search. 
And lo, it was found by Lagrange that these 
changes are like the movements of a pendulum 
which swings to the end of its arc and then swings 
back again, never once passing its proper and 
prescribed limits. How grand this conception! 
Think of a clockwork so magnificently vast and 
complicated that every tick of this pendulum rep- 
resents millions of years! Yet what confidence it 
inspires in the Maker, when we find that, for 
every disturbing force, though, for periods too 
vast to be measured by time, it may seem to be 
driving the universe toward ruin, God has placed 
there another force or law to restore equilibrium 
and keep harmony! 

So in the spiritual world we shall find no lack 
unsupplied. As surely as there is a need for 
miracles, the need will be met. Can we foresee 



90 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

that there would be need? Remember that a 
miracle is an occurrence so marked in its depart- 
ure from the usual order of things as to be to men 
a sign of God's special power. 

Let us suppose that we are all now living in 
the very year when Jesus Christ first appeared 
among men as a public teacher. The old Jewish 
church is corrupt and virtually dead. Even its 
beautiful forms of faith and worship are like the 
radiant skin of the serpent, when the living ani- 
mal has cast it off and gone elsewhere; or like 
the '' dead leaf retaining the form of its former 
self but performing none of its functions," a mere 
skeleton without the currents or even colors of 
life. Men grope in darkness and groan for light. 
The wise men of the East are waiting and watch- 
ing for a star which may guide to the day dawn. 

Let us suppose that God is purposing to give 
to men some clear and complete knowledge of 
His will. He might do it by a human teacher, 
like Plato; but how would mankind know that it 
is God who speaks? There have been many men 
who claimed to speak for God, and among them 
all we find it not easy to choose. All of them 
say something worth hearing, and perhaps some- 
thing which is not unworthy to be a word from 
God; but even in the best of these teachers so 
much is at best uncertain, that it cannot be the 
utterance of Him who never makes a guess at 
truth or duty. 

Now if God does speak to man, as to the 
grandest themes to which man can give heed, it 
is all important to hear and recognize God's voice, 
and know that it is God. Man has no right to be 
satisfied without proof that God has spoken; for 



MIRACLES. 91 

he may be imposed upon and so misled into error 
and wrong doing. If anything is plain it is that 
I have a right reverently to ask for unmistakable 
evidence that the God of the universe is address- 
ing me. 

How shall He satisfy such honest doubt? By 
any method which shews that it is He who is ac- 
tually revealing himself. If He shall choose to 
come down, as on Mount Sinai, and in a voice of 
thunder speak, till in terror we cry out, "Let not 
God speak to us lest we die!" we shall be satisfied 
that it is He. If He shall choose to appear, as to 
Moses, in a flame that burns a bush without con- 
suming it, His whisper will be as convincing as 
the thunder was before; for we shall know that 
something more than a flame must be making that 
bush radiant and glorious. It is the fact of marked 
departure from the ordinary course of things, 
which arrests the mind and impresses it with the 
presence and power of God. There is an instinct- 
ive or intuitive conviction that where there is such 
a departure from the natural and usual order, God 
must be especially present and working. Nico- 
demus said to Christ, **We know that thou art a 
teacher come from God, for no man can do these 
miracles that thou doest except God be with him." 
There is the argument for miracles, and from 
miracles, in a nutshell. Where miracles are, we 
feel that God certainly is. And to meet this nat- 
ural need of some clear proof that God speaks to 
us, it is probable that if He does speak through a 
man, that man will do such works as prove to all 
candid minds that he comes with the authority of 
God. 

Miracles are simply God's signs that authority 



92 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

comes with his messenger. When a minister o\ 
ambassador claims to represent the Court of St. 
James, the first inquiry is for his credentials. He 
may be a gentleman, scholar, statesman, hero — 
all this does not secure his reception as the repre- 
sentative of a foreign court. Nor should it. It 
is august business to stand in the stead of an em- 
pire that belts the world — on whose realm the sun 
never sets — whose beck makes the world tremble. 
When such ambassador meets our President and 
Cabinet in council, it is as though the British nation 
stood there in all the majesty of her greatness 
and power; and therefore we rightly require of 
such an ambassador credentials, so plain as to for- 
bid a doubt of his mission and commission. 
Miracles are simply the credentials of God's spec- 
ial representatives, and their probability is estab- 
lished the moment we concede the grandeur of 
the occasion when the Lord of the universe de- 
clares His will, and the imperative necessity that 
we shall not mistake His true messengers. 

This is the precise test which the word of God 
authorizes us to apply. Throughout these sub- 
lime pages there is but one uniform testimony on 
this subject. If any prophet arises, any religious 
teacher claiming to speak in behalf of God, this 
is the sign by which he is to be known: he shall, 
in his words or works, or both, shew that a power, 
beyond that of man, is moving in him and through 
him. What kind of words will answer these con- 
ditions? Not words of wisdom, only, however 
wise; for they would not prove that he who 
speaks is more than the wisest of men: not words 
of truth, only, for we cannot say how much truth 
a mere man may be able to discover and declare 



MIRACLES. 93 

But, if this teacher shdXX foretell future events; if, 
Hke Elijah, he shall correctly prophesy a drought 
of three years, to begin and end only according 
to his word; men will say, this is more than human 
wisdom. Thus Samuel, even when a child, and 
after the prophetic fires had seemingly died out 
on the altars of Israel, was established as a prophet 
of the Lord — he declared, what no mere man 
could foresee or foretell, the sudden and terrible 
destruction of Eli's two sons: and when this awful 
word was fulfilled, all Israel said, the Lord is with 
him. 

So may a teacher from God shew his creden- 
tials in his works, by doing anything which plainly 
shews a power above man. While the wonders 
which Moses wrought at Pharaoh's court were 
successfully imitated by the magicians, they car- 
ried but little weight; but when the rod was 
stretched forth and smote the dust of the earth so 
that it became lice in man and beast, and all the 
power of enchantment could not even imitate the 
miracle, even the magicians said unto Pharaoh, 
" This is the finger of God!'' 

III. If on any basis, we concede that mira- 
cles are possible and probable, they may certainly 
be most naturally expected, if the Son of God 
actually comes among men. The evidence will 
be on a scale correspondent with His dignity and 
majesty. 

Now look at His miracles. The first of them 
was the changing of water into wine at Cana. 
Nature does that every season. By processes that 
are the wonder of all ages, and a mystery even to 
the learned, she gathers from air and earth the 
secret of their moisture, and by the marvelous 



94 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

action of roots and sap-ducts, distils it into the 
grape; then by the aid of air and light and heat 
and actinic ray, slowly changes the acid liquid 
into delicious nectar. By no artificial process has 
man been able to imitate the juice of the grape. 
He must wait on the vine, as his laboratory. 
When Jesus, by an instantaneous process, and 
without approaching the pots, changed water into 
grape juice, doing in a moment what nature does 
only in months, and doing it without her appa- 
ratus for distillation. He showed to those present 
that He knew nature's secrets and could, without 
her aid, work the same results; and so He showed 
himself the God of nature, and "manifested forth 
His glory. '* If you mark closely you will see in 
His recorded miracles a progressive character, and 
a gradual unfolding of His real self. The second 
miracle was one of healing and showed power 
over disease; the third, the miraculous draught, 
showed control over the animate creation; the 
fourth, the casting out of the devil, showed His 
power over demons; and so his miracles grow in 
importance, till the rising of the dead proves His 
control over death and decay. 

Now, whatever may be said of miracles, as a 
sign that God spake by ordinary men, if ever a 
crisis justified them, it was when, last and best of 
all, God sent His only Son. We are justified in 
expecting that God's seal-ring will be on His fin- 
ger. And, so, when John Baptist from his cell 
sent to ask him for signs of his Messiahship, He 
replied by referring to the grand scale on which 
he was wielding the power of God: "the blind 
see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the 
dead are raised up!" He wrought miracles, not 



MIRACLES. 95 

to gratify curiosity; but to satisfy the reasonable 
demand for evidence that His power was divine. 
Did His miracles give certain proof of the pres- 
ence and power of God? Let us see. 

The famous clock in Strasburgh Cathedral has 
a mechanism so complicated, that it seems to the 
ignorant and superstitious almost a work of super- 
human skill. The abused and offended maker, 
yet unpaid for his work, came one day and touched 
its secret springs, and it stopped. All the patience 
and ingenuity of a nation's mechanics andartizans 
failed to restore its disordered mechanism and set 
it in motion. Afterward, when his grievances 
were redressed, that maker came again, touched 
the inner springs and set it again in motion, and 
all its multiplied parts revolved again obedient to 
his will. When thus, by a touch, he suspended 
and restored those marvelous movements, he 
gave to any doubting mind proof that he was the 
maker — certainly the master, of that clock . And 
when Jesus of Nazareth brings to a stop the 
mechanism of nature, makes its mighty wheels 
turn back or in any way arrests its grand move- 
ment — more than all, when he can not only stop, 
but start again, the mysterious clock of human 
life, he gives to an honest mind overwhelming 
proof that God is with him. For a malignant 
power might arrest or destroy, but only He could 
reconstruct and restore! 

IV. The argument for the credibility of mira- 
cles is grandly conclusive and magnificent in the 
scope of its horizon: in fact its very extent is 
embarrassing; but the main difficulty is that it 
must embrace in its wide range the entire ques- 
tion of the credibility of gospel history.. If the 



96 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

writers of the New Testament are to be believed, 
then we are just so far on the road to beheving 
their accounts of miraculous works. If their 
narrative is, for any reason, unworthy of credence, 
of course the credibility of the miracles which they 
record need not engage our attention. There is, 
however, a general question that can be examined 
without the extended argument on the credibility 
of the Scripture history, viz., is the account of a 
miracle, in itself, credible? 

The foes of Christianity have wit and wisdom 
enough to see that they may as well give up the 
fight, unless they can break down the evidence of 
miracles. Let them allow that one miraculous 
work has been wrought, and there is a fatal breach 
in their wall of defense; for, if one miracle has 
been wrought, others may have been — if miracu- 
lous works, why not miraculous words? and so 
prophecy, as well as miracle, is conceded. And 
of what use to oppose a system of religion, but- 
tressed up by both prophecy and miracle! No 
wonder the entire force of infidel argument, the 
whole mighty host, is massed and hurled against 
this giant fortress of our faith, and that every pos- 
sible weapon of wit and wisdom, ignorance and 
learning, science and philosophy, sophistry and 
fallacy, is forged for this combined assault. Here 
is the Marathon, the Thermopylae, the Waterloo, 
of the ages. 

And what is their grand plan of attack? They 
boldly unite in this assertion: that no testimony 
can prove a miracle; they attempt to undermine 
and blow up the very foundation of all arguments 
for the credibility of miracles by claiming, as 
though it were a self-evident truth, that ^ miracle 



MIRACLES. 97 

is incredible. This is a desperate measure, but 
it is becoming to a desperate cause. 

Where a man voluntarily assumes a position 
like this, in order to make all argument impossi- 
ble, there is no more hope of convincing him of 
the truth than of expanding or dilating the pupil 
of the eye by pouring more light upon it; bigotry, 
whether in believers or unbelievers, hates light, 
and grows narrower and more contracted as the 
light increases in intensity. But for the sake 
of candid minds, in danger of being misled by 
plausible sophistry, let us examine this infidel 
position. 

Is there anything incredible in a miracle? Of 
course, if it be established at all, it must be by 
the evidence of the senses to immediate witnesses; 
and by their testimony to others who do not have 
the proof of the senses. 

Are we to accept testimony on this subject? 
All questions of historic fact must be settled only 
by testimony: many matters of scientific fact 
are settled by testimony, for thousands who have 
no time, knowledge, opportunity for personal in- 
vestigation; and yet we feel certain of historic 
facts and scientific discoveries. 

Of course, if miracles wrought by Christ, and 
by prophets and apostles, are to be made credible 
to us, it can be by no other evidence than that of 
testimony. On what basis, then, rests the asser- 
tion that miracles are not credible? Are they not 
supported by testimony? Are there no witnesses? 
Are the witnesses not competent or trustworthy? 
If these were the ground of the attack, it would be 
easy to show how unsafe and unsound it is; for if on 
any subject, we have abundance of testimony and 



98 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

that of the most credible sort, it is with respect to 
miracles. 

No other religion ever dared to make its ap- 
peal to miracles, and to rest its appeal on miracles! 
Where and when miraculous wonders have been 
claimed, it has not been as decisive signal tests, 
by which the claims of such religions should 
stand or fall. It is one thing to challenge an un- 
believer to try a religion by its miracles, and quite 
another to ask a believer to accept them as part 
of a system in which he already believes. A man 
may not marry a woman because of her poverty 
or her fortune, or a wen on her neck, who will, if 
he first loves the woman, take her with poverty 
or wealth, and wen beside. 

When a religion approaches a man and boldly 
says: ** God bears me witness, both with signs 
and wonders, and with divers miracles," it meets 
him with a challenge; it bids him dispute its 
claims if he dare, by first disproving its signs if 
he can. But when a man has already become a 
disciple, for example, of Mohammed, he is dis- 
posed to receive his miracles as genuine without 
any witness but his word; and so the religious 
system instead of being based on these miracles 
as its proof, rather becomes the basis which sup- 
plies them with proof. But Christianity starts 
by bidding us apply these severe tests. If we can 
even disprove one miracle, the resurrection of 
Christ, St. Paul confesses that the whole structure 
falls; " our preaching is vain; your faith is vain.'* 

The grandeur of this bold challenge to try the 
Christian faith by the test of miracles, needs to be 
carefully considered, to be appreciated. 

Mohammed did not claim miraculous powers, 



MIRACLES. 99 

though, centuries after, they were claimed for him; 
and such marvels as he did impose on the credu- 
lity of his followers, he took good pains not to 
make dependent on any other testimony than his 
own. But see how audacious the challenge of 
our Lord: '* If I had not done among them the 
works which none other man did they had not 
had sin! " And none of these things were done 
** in a corner,'' but openly, in temple courts, on 
public streets, by lake shores, before thousands. 

Mohammed might tell of Gabriel's night visits 
and his own night journey; of the celestial deliv- 
ery of the divine book, in fragments, till the Mo- 
hammedan bible was complete; but who was there 
to prove or disprove his testimony? But Christ 
moved, during at least three years, among men 
publicly, and every step marked by words and 
works such as never before or since challenged the 
faith of man. These miracles could not be as- 
cribed to natural causes; they were such as ad- 
mitted of the test of the senses; they were so 
public as to command universal attention; and 
they were of such various character as precludes 
the notion of deception or delusion. Their num- 
ber, the instantaneous and complete character of 
the cures he wrought, and the absence of one 
failure in the attempt even to raise the dead, put 
infinite distance between these miracles and the 
pretended wonders of this or any other age, 
since those who claimed to have been cured, at 
sight or touch of sacred relics, were the few ex- 
ceptions to hundreds of disappointed applicants 
for healing virtue. 

No confirmation of the miracles of scripture 
is more remarkable than the silence of ene- 



100 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

mies; nay, we have more than silence — confession 
of the fact that they were wrought. Let us re- 
member that, from the beginning, the founder of 
this great reHgion was the focal centre of all the 
intensity of human hate. All eyes turned to him 
and subjected him to microscopic scrutiny. 

Forgeries of any kind, though as well done as 
the poems that Chatterton feigned to have found 
in old St. Mary's, are sure of detection sooner or 
later. No forgery is so difficult as that of miracles, 
especially when publicly wrought, under the scru- 
tiny of keen-eyed foes. Yet, though there was 
every motive for overthrowing them if possible, 
and although they were constantly appealed to as 
known facts, they went unchallenged! In days 
of persecution, thousands suffered torture and 
death, when, to have confessed the miracles of 
our Lord to have been impostures would have 
been deliverance, — and yet no disciple ever made 
a confession such as this! 

Most remarkable of all, even the Jewish Rabbis, 
in the Talmud, acknowledge these miracles, but 
pretend they were wrought by magic or by the 
use of a secret charm which Jesus stole out of the 
temple. Celsus, learned and able as he was 
among the assailants of Christianity, both allows 
the facts of the gospel history and concedes that 
Christ wrought miracles, but ascribes them to 
magical arts learned in Egypt. Hierocles, the 
persecutor, does not deny these miracles, though 
he ridicules the idea of worshipping Christ. Ju- 
lian, the apostate, confesses that Christ cured the 
lame and blind, and cast out demons, but thinks 
these works did not make him worthy of such 
fame. 



MIRACLES. 101 

Modern foes of Christianity do not venture 
often to attack our faith from this quarter; it is 
too well defended. No, they put on the air of 
gracious, condescending concession: they allow 
the testimony to be honest and ample, but mis- 
taken. Mr. Hume's fertile and ingenious mind 
suggests a short path by which to escape the ne- 
cessity of faith: ''deny that any testimony can 
prove a miracle,'' and it is done! And the modern 
sceptic is tempted to ask with Isaac, when Jacob 
got ready his venison so soon by making a tame 
lamb from the fold answer for a wild deer from the 
fields, "how hast thou found it so quickly, my 
son!" 

It must be confessed that Hume's argument is 
very plausible and subtle. ''Nature's laws are uni- 
form; miracles imply a violation of that uniformity 
— it is easier to believe a hundred men honest but 
mistaken than to believe one such absurdity to be 
possible!" No room remains for the exposure of 
the sophistry of Hume's argument. Already it 
has been partly answered by showing that a mira- 
cle is not a violation of natural laws. But a few 
suggestions may be added. 

One of the hinges of Hume's argument is this, 
that a miracle is contrary to experience. Of 
course if miracles were not contrary to our com- 
mon experience they could have no power as a 
sign of divine interposition. But were they con- 
trary to the experience of those who witnessed 
them? If I am to believe nothing that is con- 
trary to my experience, the door is shut to all 
grand discoveries, and corrections of erroneous 
opinion. The savage in equatorial Africa is justi- 
fied in denying that water is ever solid so that its 



102 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

surface will sustain many tons, for it is contrary 
to his experience: and if he sees the magnet Hft 
and hold a heavy weight without hands or visible 
means, or a balloon inflated with hydrogen gas 
dart upward with heavy ballast in the basket, he 
is justified in disbelieving his own senses, for his 
experience of the uniformity of nature's laws is, 
that what is heavy falls to the earth. And here is 
a suspension of the laws of gravity. 

This objection argues absurdity: for it renders 
incredible all exceptions to the otherwise uniform 
experience of men. This is unfair. On a basis of 
simple science, when any new fact contradicts our 
hitherto uniform experience, instead of denying 
the fact, we make our science broader, and look 
for some new law or force, unknown or not under- 
stood before. Just this, God means we shall do 
when we behold a miracle: stop and ask what 
new force is at work, which is not found in the 
ordinary uniform operation of mechanical laws: 
and what means this intervention of a superior 
hand to control and reverse nature's ordinary 
movement. 

Hume's argument will have little weight with 
those who understand Mr. Hume, and see how 
he was forced by his own philosophy to this posi- 
tion. One of his unfortunate admirers acknowl- 
edged that the disposition to doubt everything 
was so interwoven with his whole character, that 
he seemed to be uncertain even of his own exist- 
ence. He was the modern Pyrrho, and not an 
unworthy successor of that ancient doubter who 
was not sure of anything — who did not know 
anything, and was not sure he did not know — 
who doubted whether even the world itself were 



MIRACLES. 103 

not an illusion, and whose friends accompanied 
him in his walks lest he should doubt the reality 
of a precipice and so walk off its edge to his own 
ruin. 

Hume's arguments failed to satisfy his own 
mind. Hear his own words speaking of his spec- 
ulations: ''They have so wrought upon me and 
heated my brain that I am ready to reject all be- 
lief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion 
even as more probable or likely than another. 
Where am I or what? From what causes do I de- 
rive my existence, and to what condition shall I 
return? Whose favor shall I court, and whose 
anger must I dread? What beings surround me, 
and on whom have I any influence, and who have 
any influence on me? I am confounded with all 
these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the 
most deplorable condition imaginable, environed 
with the deepest darkness and utterly deprived of 
the use of every member and faculty.'' 

It partly refutes Hume's view of miracles to 
show how he came to hold it. His theology com- 
pelled his scepticism; his denial of miracles was 
necessary unless he gave up his philosophy. To one 
who believes in a personal God, who may for good 
reasons interfere with nature's ordinary processes, 
miracles are not incredible; but an Atheist, Pan- 
theist or Deist must deny the possibility of mira- 
cles. For if, behind and above nature, there be 
no intelligent, divine, controlling hand, the very 
existence of the universe depends on the abso- 
lute uniformity of nature's laws and processes. 
Mr. Hume was a Deist. He traced the various 
effects of nature to a uniform series of causes: no 
interruption could be supposed to occur, for there 



104 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

would be nothing to restore order and harmony. 
It is well to have provision for that extra pressure 
in the water works, if there be an intelHgent per- 
son there, to determine when to gear on the spare 
machinery, and to disconnect it when the need of 
it ceases: but, if the machine should have no 
brain behind it, it would not do to allow such 
extra pressure, for the machine cannot restore it- 
self to its ordinary and uniform working — and to 
have fourfold pressure when the hydrants are 
closed would destroy both machinery and dis- 
tributing pipes. For Hume to admit miracles 
would be to admit a personal God — back of a 
nature's enginery, an engineer whose power and 
intelligence first fixed the uniformity of nature's 
ordinary workings, and who if he chooses to 
bring some new force to bear, can disconnect it 
when his purpose is answered. Hume's argument 
against miracles was not simply the result of can- 
did reasoning, but a manufactured theory invented 
to fit into his deistical philosophy. 

I am prepared to prove that his dishonesty 
in the matter lies even deeper, in a deliberate de- 
termination to oppose the claims of the religion 
of Christ. I quote his own w^ords, that it may 
be seen how he contradicts himself. After 
boldly saying that *^a miracle supported by any 
human testimony is more properly a subject of 
derision than of argument,'' he says, '*I own that 
there may possibly be miracles of such a kind as 
to admit of proof from human testimony;" and 
then imagines a case of miracle, so attested by 
competent witness that philosophers ought to re- 
ceive it as certain. And then mark how he sneaks 
out as by a trap door, lest he be caught in his 



MIRACLES. 105 

own admissions. ''But should this miracle be 
ascribed to a new system of religion, men in all 
ages have been so imposed on by ridiculous 
stories of that kind that this very circumstance 
would be a full proof of the cheat! " 

Verily, a Daniel come to judgment! Here is 
a learned man, a prince among sceptics, who says 
in one breath that "no kind of testimony for any 
kind of miracle can possibly amount to a proba- 
bility, much less to a proof:" then, in another 
breath, concedes that ''there may be miracles of 
such a kind as to admit of proof from human 
testimony, and be received by philosophers as 
certain;'' and, yet in another breath, hastens to 
say that if such miracle be used as a sign of a di- 
vine religion we must again reject it! 

The jewel of consistency evidently burns very 
dimly in the diadem of this deist: a miracle can- 
not possibly be credible, yet it may be credible; 
and again even a credible miracle may be also 
incredible! The fact is Mr. Hume was bound to 
overthrow Christianity, and he would hesitate at 
no violation of logical consistency, or moral can- 
dor, to avoid giving the religion of the Bible a 
show of support. If one should descend to such 
unfairness in dealing with religious doubts and 
difficulties, he would be met, and deserve to be, 
by a pelting hail of hisses. 

Let one guard be put about what has been 
said, to prevent perversion. Some, in arguing 
for the truth of Revelation, start by proving mir- 
acles to be credible, and inferring the doctrine to 
be divine because so sanctioned. But this is by 
no means the whole truth. Our Lord himself 
did not seek to force a faith or even conviction 



106 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Upon the minds of men whose hearts were hostile 
to Him and his work. If a man, by his bondage 
to his philosophy, or to an accusing conscience, or 
to selfish interests, is predisposed and determined 
not to see that Christianity is of God, no amount 
of evidence will convince him. Light does not 
reach a shut eye, which is for all purposes of see- 
ing, a blind eye. The heart makes the theology. 

If a man comes to the Bible with open eye he 
will find two influences operating together to pro- 
duce conviction. First he will find such truth and 
such a person there as dispose him to expect di- 
vine credentials: and then he will find divine cre- 
dentials disposing him to believe the truths and 
the person to be all that they claim, essentially 
divine; the written word and the living word of 
God. And many an examiner of Scripture scarce 
knows which way conviction first takes hold of 
his mind, that Christ must be a divine being; 
whether from his teaching and life, or because 
His wonderful works reveal His divinity. You 
stand in sunlight and you are at the same moment 
dazzled by its brightness and thrilled by its warmth. 
Whether you were conscious of light or heat first, 
you scarce know. You approach the Bible; there 
breaks upon you a sense that you are walking in 
light: if there be truth anywhere it is here. You 
find a record of miraculous signs, confirming the 
teachings of the book of God. Whether the 
signs lead you to look at the truth, or the truth 
leads you to expect the signs, you cannot tell. 

"It becomes easier to believe in the miracles, 
because of our personal faith in Him as a being 
of whom such extraordinary deeds might be rea- 
sonably expected, than to believe in Him primarily 



MIRACLES. 107 

on the ground of His having exercised miraculous 
powers." Some have been drawn to the cradle 
of this wonderful child by seeing His star in the 
east, and being prepared to find the holy One, by 
the signs that herald him. Others first found Him 
at the cross, and, when the precious drops fell on 
them with cleansing, healing power, could well 
believe the story of the magi. 

We have no hope of convincing a sceptic sim- 
ply by miracles. But, if in a candid spirit any 
man will search the Scriptures, he shall find that 
they testify of Christ, that Christ is a witness 
unto Himself. There have been those who, like 
Gilbert West and Lyttleton, have started to lay 
hands on Him as an impostor, but who approach- 
ing Him through the paths of Scripture study 
have, when their eyes rested full on His blessed 
person, seen the divinity flash forth even through 
the veil of humanity, and, like the soldiers in the 
garden, have gone backward and fallen to the 
ground. They started to oppose: they stopped 
to espouse and embrace. 

Every study of the Bible is a study of the 
evidences of Christianity. The Bible is itself the 
greatest miracle of all, and the Son of God more 
wonderful than any of the wonders that confirm 
His claims. The believer feels this in every fibre 
of his being. Rob me of miracles and of proph- 
ecy: you have not robbed me of Him. Before 
Him I bow, because of what He is. The morn- 
ing star pales and fades at sunrise. There is a 
glory, in the presence of which all else is dim. 

And if you will come and stand in the radiance 
of that presence, with eye unveiled by wilful hos- 
tility to light, and wait there until you are bathed 



108 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

in the glory, filled and thrilled by the love and 
life that come in the same beam with the light, 
you shall need no starry miracles to herald the 
morning, and assure you that He, who can impart 
to you the knowledge of God and the peace of 
God. can be no other than the Sun of Righteous- 
ness! 



CHAPTER V. 



THE WITNESS OF THE BIBLE TO ITSELF — ITS 
SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY. 

"Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven." — Psalm 
CXIX : 89. 

This sublime assertion of the eternal stability 
of the Word of God is ''Luther's text. " He had 
it written in charcoal on the walls of his chamber, 
and wrought in embroidery on the dress of his 
servants. Earthly changes reach not the heavenly 
sphere; and there the Word of God is settled, far 
beyond the reach of disturbing causes. Even 
progressive Modern Science, which has unsettled 
the notions of centuries, is unable to prove the 
testimony of God's Word to be false. 

The I3ible is a very remarkable book, from 
whatever source it has come. One of the princes 
of men, the light of the fourth century, whose 
oratory gave him the name of Chrysostom, "the 
golden mouth," and whose virtues made him the 
admiration and terror of the corrupt court of 
Eudoxia — such a man, himself one of the fore- 
most scholars of his day, has given to the Bible 
its very name, ''^H Biblos' — the Book! 

In every work we see the workman — his skill 
in handling tools, his inventive genius in planning, 
his taste in arranging and adorning. The artist 
breathes in his canvas and speaks in the marble. 
If there be a work of God, we expect it to express 



110 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and exhibit him. You go to St. Peter's Cathe- 
dral; you stand beneath that vast dome, prepared 
to feel a sense of awe at the grand proportions 
and exquisite decorations — for Michael Angelo 
designed and adorned it. And when, in the hush 
of midnight, you look up into the dome of heaven 
and see thousands of lamps that burn for whole 
milleniums unconsumed, and shine at a distance 
beyond calculation — when you remember that that 
streaming banner of light, the "Milky Way," is 
myriads of stars, in close ranks, like countless war- 
riors, so that you see only the lines of light flash- 
ing from their silver helmets, you are prepared to 
believe that God planned that concave, and wrote 
his own name on it in letters of light. ** The heav- 
ens declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
sheweth his handiwork. " 

So, if this book be the Word of God, we shall 
find in it proof and mark of a divine mind and 
hand. There will be a grandeur in the sweep and 
span of its teachings which reminds of the arch of 
the firmament — a glory about its facts and truths 
which suggests the radiance of suns and stars; 
there will be that which is too high for our attain- 
ment, and too broad for our measurement. God 
will compel us to say, ''Hath not his hand made 
all these things!" The Bible asks you to try it by 
this test: Does it bear marks of a more than hu- 
man mind? If there be nothing in it inconsistent 
with a merely human origin, it is idolatry to call 
it the Word of God — to treat it as of divine origin, 
and yield it divine honors. But if there be here 
such a gigantic structure of truth as that not even 
a race of Titans could have built it; if its basis is 
laid deeper than man ever dug, and its pinnacles 



SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BI3LE. Ill 

rise higher than man ever reached, how are we to 
escape the conclusion and conviction that its au- 
thor and maker is God? 

The Bible has always been the focal point of 
all controversy; for it is the very key of the whole 
system of Christianity. To carry this by storm, 
or undermine it, is to take Christianity at its cen- 
tre; and the outposts follow the fortunes of the 
main defenses. Of late, the form of attack and 
the tone of assault have changed. Infidelity is 
rarely insulting, contemptuous. It is rather plaus- 
ible, patronizing. It used to pound the Bible 
with denunciations; now it pats the Bible and 
says, "Really a very fine book, but by no means 
faultless!" Dr. Pressense says of Renan: ''He 
very skilfully undermines Christianity while pro- 
fuse in its praise; he buries it in flowers. He comes 
to the tomb of the Saviour not to weep and wor- 
ship like the women of the gospel, but to stifle 
with perfumes and spices any lingering spark of 
life in the religion of Jesus. He does not deal a 
blow with a sharp sword; no, he embalms. But 
the result is the same as though he made a violent 
attack. " 

Modern scepticism, with the lofty air of pro- 
found learning and philosophic doubt, approaches 
the Divine Word. Under pretense of a careful, 
conscientious, impartial investigation, as though 
reluctant not to believe that the Bible is all it 
claims to be, it applies its strictly scientific tests, 
and, like a physician who feels a feeble pulse, 
sounds a decayed lung, or tests a diseased heart, 
turns away with a sigh of disappointment and an 
ominous shake of the head. And yet the more 
we see of scientific and philosophic scepticism, 



1)2 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

the more we are satisfied that, Hke Lord Nelson, 
it covers the only sound eye, and declares it can't 
see with the blind one. Underneath all this as- 
sumption of judicial coolness and fairness we 
detect voluntary suppression of the truth, partial 
pleading, desperate corruptions of the doctrines 
and perversions of the facts of Scripture, and the 
same hot hate of the religion of the Bible, the 
same passion to overthrow it, the same resolute 
hostility to everything supernatural, as in the 
bolder and more defiant forms of attack. You 
may find this plausible scepticism in the sanctum 
of the editor, the silver tongue of the orator, the 
chair of the university professor, and even the 
pulpit of the nominal preacher. The Bible is, by 
the confession even of sceptics, the best of books, 
and, on the whole, most marked by all that gives 
permanent value; but they would have us believe 
that it is scarcely abreast with our advanced age, 
and that its claim to infallibility is absurd. 

But the Bible accepts no patronage, no hesi- 
tating homage, no qualified encomium. Submit 
the Word of God to any and every test which is 
possible and proper — intellectual, moral, philo- 
sophical, ethical, literary, or scientific. If, on any 
rational ground, it does not stand the test, it must 
fall; if it has no granite buttresses^ it is folly to 
attempt to support its tremendous claims to divine 
authority by any rotten props of our own. 

Of all tests, the scientific is the most unprom- 
ising; for here, if at any point, we may expect to 
find the Bible weak, exposed to successful assault. 
That is a grand fort which has no angle which its 
guns do not fully command. Even firm friends 
of the Bible show some little apprehension when 



SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE. 113 

we talk of applying scientific tests; when science 
comes, as with crucible and lancet, to try its se- 
vere processes on the Word. But even at this 
weakest point, God's Word is too strong for the 
combined strength of all its foes. From this an- 
gle, as well as every other, its guns command the 
approach and make a clean sweep; and every 
candid doubter may find abundant proof, even on 
the scientific side, that a more than human mind 
has produced the Bible. It is a Gibraltar, and 
they who attack it, like the waves that sweep 
against that giant rock in the Mediterranean seas, 
do not break or even shake it, but only cleave 
themselves asunder! 

The argument from the side of science is the 
more conclusive because the Bible is not, and can- 
not be, in the nature of the case, a scientific book. 
In history, any matter of science touched upon 
would be only casual, and whatever scientific er- 
rors or inadvertencies might occur would not im- 
pair its value as a narrative of facts. So a treatise 
on mathematics would not be the less trustworthy 
as a guide in working out difficult problems, 
simply because there might be words misspelled, 
or inaccurate statements about geography. Every 
book is judged by its main purpose; all else is 
incidental. 

The object of the Bible is not to teach science, 
but moral and spiritual truth. Scientific facts and 
truths may be discovered by the intellect and in- 
dustry of man; and hence no revelation of them 
is needed. But our origin and destiny, our rela- 
tions to God, the way of peace and purity, the 
link between the here and the hereafter — the high- 
est wisdom of man has only guessed at these 



13 4 MANY INFALLIBLE LROOLS. 

things; and here comes the need that God shall 
speak. 

We are therefore to judge the Word of God 
by its professed purpose, and if, in the unfolding 
of moral and religious truth, scientific errors or 
inaccuracies appear, which have no relation to 
spiritual truth, they may not make the Bible un- 
worthy of acceptance as a guide to the knowledge 
and practice of duty. Lord Bacon, from a strictly 
philosophical point of view, has said that the 
"scope or purpose of the Spirit of God is not to 
express matters of nature in Scripture, otherwise 
than in passage, for application to man's capacity 
and to matters moral and divine. " It was no part 
of the vdesign or mission of inspired writers to tell 
us scientific truth. Hence it was natural that, in 
referring to the Kingdom of Nature, they should 
use the language of appearance, as we do now 
at an age of the world far more advanced in sci- 
entific knowledge. We know that the sun is the 
centre of the solar system, and that the earth 
moves around it; yet we talk of the sun as rising 
in the east, setting in the west, and revolving 
about the earth. We speak of the dew as descend- 
ing from the heaven, as though distilled in the far 
depths of space, while in fact the atmosphere 
gives up its vapor at the touch of a colder surface, 
as an ice-pitcher collects and condenses the moist- 
ure from the air. When, therefore, sacred writers 
use forms of speech which fit appearances, not 
realities, and accord with popular impressions, 
rather than scientific discoveries, **the absence of 
scientific accuracy by no means involves any real 
discrepancy or contradiction." 

Had the language of Scripture been scientific. 



SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE. 115 

instead of popular, it would have been a blemish 
and a hindrance, because it would have arrested 
attention and diverted it from the grander truths 
that the Bible was meant to unfold, and created 
controversies on matters of little consequence. 
Suppose, for instance, that in the opening chap- 
ters of Genesis, Moses had accurately announced, 
in plain terms, all the discoveries of modern geol- 
ogy and astronomy; had given this globe a great 
age, even prior to the creation of man; had made 
the six days of creation six periods of vast length; 
had described the vast vegetation of the carbon- 
iferous age, and the marvellous process by which 
it was converted into coal; had told men of the 
original chemical or "cosmical** light and heat that 
preceded the appearance of the sun — of the mighty 
monsters that sported in the waters and roamed on 
the land; had recorded the tremendous convulsions 
that rocked the earth as on the bosom of a vast 
crater — what would have been the effect? 

First, scientific discovery would have been an- 
nounced prematurely, before mankind was fitted 
to understand or use it. Secondly, God would 
have been contradicting himself by communicat- 
ing directly to man knowledge which He had de- 
creed man shall dig out for himself. Thirdly, men 
would have forgotten the more important spiritual 
truths, that are the main matters of revelation, in 
discussions of subordinate questions, for which 
the race was not yet ready. Fourthly, the effect 
would be to discredit the whole revelation — to 
make Moses appear either as a madman or a 
dreamer, and thus to defeat the grand end for 
which the Inspired Word was given! And yet, 
if the Bible is God's Truth, it ought not, even by 



116 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

the way, to affirm what is actually untrue. We 
cannot imagine the infinite God as telling man the 
grandest truths on spiritual themes and surround 
ing them with many little falsehoods, simply be- 
cause man was not mature enough to understand 
the full facts. 

Was there any way by which all desirable ends 
should be met? One only suggests itself. God 
might lead inspired men to use such language, 
that, without revealing scientific facts in advance, 
it might accurately accommodate itself to them, 
when discovered. The language might be so elas- 
tic and flexible as to contract itself to the narrow- 
ness of ignorance, and yet expand itself to the 
dimensions of knowledge, like the rubber bandage, 
so invaluable in modern surgery, which stretches 
about an inflamed and swollen limb, yet shrinks 
as the swelling abates. If there be terms or phrases 
which, without suggesting puzzling enigmas, shall 
yet contain within themselves ample space for all 
the demands of growing human knowledge; if the 
Bible may, from imperfect human language, select 
terms which may hold hidden truths, till ages to 
come shall disclose the inner meaning, — this would 
seem to be the best solution of this difficult prob- 
lem. And when we come to compare the language 
of the Bible with modern science, we find just 
this to be the fact. 

I. Take, for example, astronomy. How bitter 
has been the battle between undevout astrono- 
mers and the Word of God! 

We are told that the Bible term, ** firmament," 
is an ancient blunder, crystallized. Modern sci- 
ence, taking a dignified stand, says: '*Ye have 
heard it hath been said by them of old time, there 



SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE. 117 

is a solid sphere above us which revolves with its 
starry lamps; but I say unto you that this is an 
old notion of ignorance, for there is nothing but 
vast space filled with ether above us, and stars are 
suns varying by infinite distances, and the earth 
turns on its axis. " 

But look closer at this word ''firmament." 
While Mr. Goodwin declares it "irreconcilable 
with modern astronomy," and timid apologists 
venture to suggest that Moses simply made a mis- 
take, or may be pardoned for speaking after the 
manner of men, we find that the original term 
fakiya means that which is spread out, or over- 
spreads — an ''expanse, " Now, read the word ex- 
panse where firmament occurs, and there is not 
only no contradiction as to the facts of astronomy, 
but perfect harmony. If Moses had been Mitchell, 
he could not have chosen a better word to ex- 
press the appearance, and yet accommodate the 
reality. He actually anticipated science. And 
this is one of the ''Mistakes of Moses. " 

Another error of them of old time was that 
of the revolution of the heavenly bodies around 
the earth; and after Copernicus, Kepler and Gal- 
ileo taught the true law of the solar system, men 
raised an outcry against the Bible. And yet the 
Bible is found to be entirely consistent with the 
discoveries of science, that the earth is not flat, 
but a sphere, and that it moves with perfect uni- 
formity on its axis. 

Take such expressions as these: Job xxvi:/ — He 
hangeth the earth upon nothing. Jobxxxviii:8 — 
Who shut up the sea with doors when it rushed 
forth and came out of the womb; when I made 
the cloud its garment, and thick darkness its 



118 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

swaddling-band? and established my decree upon 
it, and set bars and doors, and said hitherto shalt 
thou come, but no further, etc. Job xxviii:i2 — 
Hast thou commanded the morning since thy 
days, and. caused the dayspring to know his 
place? 

How beautifully this language adapts itself to 
the scientific facts not then known — that a relation 
is established between land and sea, by which the 
waters cannot overwhelm the earth; that this 
globe is not supported on any other solid sub- 
stance, as the Pagan mythologies even now teach, 
but held in place by invisible forces of gravita- 
tion; that the revolution of the earth upon its 
axis is so absolutely regular that, as LaPlace says, 
it has not for two thousand years varied the one- 
hundredth part of a second; so that the dayspring 
never fails or lingers in the eastern sky. 

Jeremiah xxxiii:22 — ''The host of heaven can- 
not be numbered, neither the sand of the sea 
measured. " 

The fact of the vast host of stars is a fact of 
modern discovery. Hipparchus, about a century 
and a half before Christ, gave the number of stars 
as 1,022, and Ptolemy, in the beginning of the 
second century of the Christian era, could find 
but 1,026. We may on a clear night, with the 
unaided eye, see only 1,160, or, if we could sur- 
vey the whole celestial sphere, about 3,000. But 
when the telescope began to be pointed to the 
heavens, less than three centuries ago, by Galileo, 
then for the first time men began to know that 
Jeremiah was right when he made the stars as 
countless as the sand on the sea-shore. When 
Lord Rosse's instrument turned its great mirror 



SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE. 119 

to the sky, lo, the number of visible stars increased 
to nearly 400,000,000! and Herschel compares 
the multitude of them to glittering dust scattered 
on the black background of the heavens. When 
John Herschel, at the foot of the dark continent, 
resolves the nebulae into suns, and Lord Rosse, 
as with the eye of a Titan, finds in the cloudy 
scarf about Orion "a gorgeous bed of stars,'' and 
the very milky way itself proves to be simply a 
grand procession of stars absolutely without num- 
ber, — how true is the exclamation of Jeremiah, 600 
years before Christ, 2,200 years before Galileo: 
"The host of heaven cannot be numbered!" Who 
taught Jeremiah astronomy? 

II. When the modern science of Geology be- 
gan to unwrap the earth's coverings and read the 
records of the rocks, timid faith grew pale and 
trembled for the Word of God. A vast age was 
revealed for our globe, and what must we do with 
the "Mistakes of Moses?" How came these fos- 
sils or organic remains in the rocks? and in such 
quantities that coral reefs represent countless mill- 
ions of zoophytes, and mountain masses are com- 
posed of shells not larger than a grain of sand? 
The Tuscan hills are built of chambered shells so 
small that one ounce of stone contains over 10,- 
000; and the dust that falls from the chalk at the 
blackboard under the microscope proves to be 
fossils! And what enormous periods were re- 
quired for living creatures to build such masses 
as these! 

Some attempted to account for the deposit of 
these fossils by the convulsions atterfcling the del- 
uge; others suggested that God built the world 
out of fossils, in which life had never dwelt, so 



120 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

that the rocks, after all, really lie to us. Others 
have been ready to thunder anathemas against 
science, because they could not reconcile it with 
Scripture, after the fashion of the Brahmin who, 
when the microscope showed him the folly of his 
pagan notions and practices, rid himself of his 
doubts by dashing the microscope into fragments! 
But surely the Bible cannot need such methods of 
defense. If truth be divided against itself, how, 
then, shall his kingdom stand? 

The correspondence between the Mosaic ac- 
count of creation and the most advanced discov- 
eries of science proves that only He who built the 
world built the Book. Note a few instances: 

I. The order of creation. 

Geology teaches a watery waste, whose dense 
vapors shut out light: Moses affirms that, at first, 
the earth was formless and void, and darkness 
was upon the face of the deep. Geology makes 
life to precede light, and the life develops beneath 
the deep: Moses presents the creative spirit as 
brooding over that great deep, before God said 
"Let light be." Geology makes the atmosphere 
to form an expanse by lifting watery vapors into 
clouds, and so separating the fountains of waters 
above from those below: Moses affirms the same. 
Geology tells us that continents next lifted them- 
selves from beneath the great deep, and bore veg- 
etation: Moses also declares that the dry land 
appeared, and brought forth grass, herb, and the 
tree, exactly correspondent to the three orders of 
primeval vegetation! Geology then asserts that 
the heavens became cleared of cloud and the sun 
and moon and stars appeared: Moses does not 
say that God created all these heavenly bodies on 



SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE. 12 1 

the fourth creative day, but that they then began 
to serve to divide day from night and to become 
signs for seasons, days and years! Geology then 
shows us sea monsters, reptiles and winged crea- 
tures: Moses likewise reveals the waters bringing 
forth moving and creeping creatures and fowl fly- 
ing in the expanse. Geology unfolds next, the 
race of quadruped mammals- — and so Moses makes 
cattle and beast of the earth to follow, in the same 
order and on the sixth day of creation. Geology 
brings man on the scene last of all, and so does 
Moses. Geology makes the first light and heat 
not solar but chemical or ** cosmical. " Moses 
makes light to precede the first appearance of the 
sun, by the space of three creative days! 

2. Look at the order of animal creation! 
Geology and comparative anatomy combine to 
teach that the order of creation was from lower to 
higher. Fish, proportion of brain to spinal cord; 
2 to I. Reptiles 2j^^ to i. Birds, 3 to i. Mam- 
mals 4 to I. Man 33 to i. Now this is exactly 
the order of Moses. Who told Moses, what mod- 
ern comparative anatomy has discovered, that fish 
and reptile come below birds? 

And these are some more of the ''Mistakes of 
Moses!" Here is a record of creation, produced 
fifteen or twenty centuries before science unveiled 
these modern facts and truths; and yet there is 
not one scientific blunder or error, and the coin- 
cidences and correspondences are so many and so 
marked, that a modern scientist has confessed, 
that if one should sketch briefly the celestial 
mechanism of LaPlace, the Cosmos of Humboldt 
and the latest system of geology, no simpler and 
sublimer words could be found than those of 
Moses! 



122 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

3. Again geology shows us that the vast 
plants of the great coal age are such as never 
grew in sunlight but in long continued shade; 
they are such as must have fed upon an atmos- 
phere full of vapor — and their wood is not hard- 
ened as it would have been under sunshine. Who 
taught Moses to put the growth of that earliest 
vegetation in the period preceding the first ap- 
pearance of the sun in the sky! 

4. Geology teaches six periods of creation, 
extending through ages. Moses appears to teach 
six days of 24 hours each. But again on exam- 
ining closely, we find the Hebrew word, Yom^ 
means a period of time, and is often used of in- 
definite periods or seasons! In the first chapter 
of Genesis, sceptics triumphantly say, it makes 
creative periods to be measured by 24 hours; and 
yet in Gen. II: 4, it is used of the whole time 
occupied in creation! In Psalm xcv: 8, ''in the 
day of temptation," it means forty years. We 
use the English word with the same looseness of 
application — a ''polar day" means six months — 
the day of grace, the period of probation. Ori- 
gen and Augustine, long before science suggested 
that day might mean a period, maintained that 
the Hebrew word was indefinite; and when the 
Bible declares that "one day is with the Lord as a 
thousand years," it gives a clew and key to its 
own interpretation. 

Again you w^ill notice that of these creative 
days Moses said **and the evening and the morn- 
ing were the first day. *' If the solar day is meant, 
why begin with the evening? the solar day ob- 
viously begins with sunrise. To account for this 
curious feature in the Mosiac record by the fact 



SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE. 123 

that the Jews reckoned their day from sunset to 
sunset, is to reason in a circle, for it was from this 
first chapter of Genesis that such an unnatural 
mode of reckoning proceeded. Now when we 
turn to geology and find that each creative period 
began in an evening and developed into a morn- 
ing — light developing out of darkness and order 
out of confusion — we see why Moses was guided 
to make each day to begin with evening. 

5. The Deluge, as recorded in the days of 
Noah, has been thought to be irreconcilable with 
modern science. The grand point where objec- 
tions center is that of the universal character of 
the flood. As the human race then occupied but 
a small part of the globe, to submerge the whole, 
so that even the loftiest mountains should be more 
than covered seems a needless waste of divine en- 
ergy ; especially as it may well be doubted whether 
the entire atmosphere, condensed into rain, would 
suffice to lift the seas to such a height; and there 
are believed to be many evidences, in certain 
parts of the earth, that no universal flood has 
prevailed within the last 6,000 years. 

To these objections it is only necessary to re- 
ply that the moment the Bible record is inter- 
preted with reference to the inhabited world, all 
difficulties vanish. Such phrases as ''the whole 
earth," *'under the whole heaven,'" etc., are fre- 
quently used in Scripture of so much of the earth 
as was peopled; or even of Palestine, and the 
lands lying about it. Terms of a universal char- 
acter are to be interpreted not literally, but by 
the design and end of the writer. When we are 
told that "all countries came into Egypt to buy 
corn" — what do we understand? Are we to sup- 



124 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

pose that, if there were inhabitants in Britain, 
they journed to Egypt for grain? It would take 
about as much time, in those days, to get there 
and back, as it would to secure a new harvest. 
But if we understand that Egypt became a gran- 
ary — a house of bread, to all the district, over 
which the famine prevailed, the record is plain. 

Now, in the account of the deluge, Moses is 
writing of God's awful judgment upon the sin of 
the race. His judgment fell upon the earth, for 
man^s sake and only so much of the earth as was 
the scene of man's sin, was necessarily concerned. 
If then we understand the whole earth to refer to 
the entire inhabited surface, the flood is still rela- 
tively universal, i. ^., universal as to mankind; 
and the usage of similar terms in other parts of 
Scripture justifies such interpretation! Hugh 
Miller has shown that all the phenomena of the 
flood might be produced by the gradual sinking 
and rising again of that part of the earth's sur- 
face known as the cradle of the race; and this 
would produce the very effects, so graphically de- 
scribed by Noah, "breaking up of the fountains 
of the great deep and the returning of the waters 
from off" the earth." It ought to be added that 
tradition even among the Pagans confirms the 
fact of the flood and the resting •:>f the ark on 
Ararat. 

Haywood W. Guion of North Carolina has 
suggested a theory of the Deluge, which both 
harmonizes all the discoveries of science with the 
record in Genesis, and may yet displace all pre- 
vious conceptions of the subject. He takes lit- 
erally the statement of St. Peter, ''the world that 
then was, being overflowed with water, perished." 



SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE. 125 

In Genesis we read — 'Met the waters under the 
heaven be gathered together unto one place and 
let the dry land appear. '* In both passages there 
is no hint of more than one continent or more 
than one sea. The dry land or earth seems to be 
by itself in one grand elevation above sea level, 
and the waters gathered in one place. This would 
imply, as any scientist knows, certain peculiar 
conditions. This solitary continent, rising in one 
mass from the midst of one sea that surrounds it, 
would present no great inequalities of surface, 
though there might be elevations that, compared 
with the rest, would be hills or even mountains; 
there would be a great uniformity of climate and 
temperature, no rains or clouds, but heavy mists 
constantly keeping the earth moist; and conse- 
quently vast vegetable growths, very luxuriant 
and abundant, making animal food unnecessary 
either for man or beast — there would be a para- 
dise of verdure, and one perennial spring. This 
Mr. Guion holds was the case. At the time of 
the deluge this huge dome, that rose out of the 
water, was shattered by volcanic explosions and 
a great earthquake, and its grand roof fell in and 
became ^he bed of what is now the Pacific ocean, 
while its shattered and irregular rim was tilted up 
into the great mountain ranges, that line the east- 
ern boundaries of the Pacific; thus the bed of the 
original ocean was lifted into the continents of 
our eastern and western hemispheres, while the 
sea rushed into the new bed formed by the sub- 
mersion of the original continent. This would 
give us in the new order of things great mountain 
ranges, with marked inequalities of climate and 
temperature — and all the phenomena of the chang- 



126 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

ing seasons, winds, clouds, storms of rain and 
snow; and consequently the first rainbow. Ani- 
mals inhabiting barren districts would be driven 
to devour animals weaker than they, and animal 
food would become necessary to man. This theory 
makes the whole original world to be submerged 
and all the high hills covered. The gigantic ani- 
mals of that primeval continent engulphed in the 
foaming waters and afterward buried beneath the 
superficial mass of shifting soil, would furnish the 
remarkable remains found in so many places, 
shewing that the creatures they represent were 
overtaken in some universal catastrophe. 

Mr. TuUidge says: that ''with the advance of 
discovery, the opposition, supposed to exist be- 
tween Revelation and Geology, has disap- 
peared; and of the eighty theories which the 
French Institute counted in 1806, as hostile to 
the Bible, not one now stands." Not only so; 
but among the mightiest advocates of God's Word 
are many of the masters who have explored his 
works. Their united testimony is, that we have 
no occasion to fear for the Bible notwithstanding 
the oppositions of science falsely so called. For 
''Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Word 
shall not pass away,'* says Creation's Lord. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORD OF GOD. 
"Thy word is true from the beginning." — Psalm cxix: i6o. 

That is, **from the first word." The enthusi- 
asm of the unknown writer of this Psalm knows 
no ordinary bounds. He sets out to rear a mon- 
ument to the Word of God, and it is like a solid 
shaft of marble, sculptured into twenty-two sides, 
and each side bearing eight inscriptions. After 
the fashion of ancient acrostics, each side is ap- 
propriated to one letter of the Hebrew alphabet, 
and each of its eight inscriptions begins with that 
letter, as though all the resources of language 
would vainly be exhausted in endeavoring to de- 
scribe the wonders of the Scriptures. He con- 
cludes this twentieth section by declaring that, 
from the first word on, every word is true. Re- 
suming the argument of the last chapter, let us 
look at 

HI. Cosmogony. How grand a fact it is, in 
favor of the Bible, that not one scientific error, 
blunder or absurdity has ever been found there! 
Can the sacred books of other religions endure 
that test? Apply this touchstone to the Koran, 
the Shastra, the Zendavesta, or the teachings of 
the wisest and best of uninspired men. Compare 
Moses with Zoroaster and Confucius, Seneca and 
Socrates, Plato and Pythagoras, Anaxagoras and 
Aristotle. When the ancient religions or philoso- 



128 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

phies touch the Bible-theme of creation, they 
abound in sheer absurdities! Put the first chapter 
of Genesis beside the Hindu idea of the universe, 
which we might write out thus: 

"Millions upon millions of cycles ago, this 
world came to be. It was made a flat triangular 
plain with high hills and mountains and great 
waters. It exists in several stories, and the whole 
mass is held up on the heads of elephants with 
their tails turned out, and their feet rest on the 
shell of an immense tortoise, and the tortoise 
on the coil of a great snake; and when these 
elephants shake themselves, that makes the earth 
quake/' 

Suppose the Bible had made such mistakes as 
Plato, who held that the earth is an intelligent be- 
ing, or Kepler, who affirmed it a living animal! 
or the old sages, who taught that the Milky Way 
is a path over which the sun used to journey and 
showing the marks of his footsteps; or a band of 
solid substance joining the two parts of the globe, 
etc. What if the old notions, that brutes are hu- 
man beings in changed shapes, that there are fish 
in the sea with horses' heads, that the fabled phoe- 
nix was a real bird, and that thunderbolts come 
from three stars, specially Jupiter, — were found 
in God's own Book! Who guarded this most an- 
cient volume from the superstitions that corrupted 
astronomy into astrology and chemistry into al- 
chemy? Who taught the writer of the 104th 
Psalm to compose that grand poem on the won- 
ders of the created world, and yet introduce not 
one of the scientific errors current in those days; 
so that even Von Humboldt was compelled to 
confess that *'in a lyrical poem of such limited 



SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORD. 129 

compass, we find the whole universe, the heavens 
and the earth, sketched with a few bold touches!" 

IV. Natttral Philosophy. Modern discov- 
eries as to the nature of light make the descrip- 
tion of Moses divinely grand. He does not 
represent this mystery that vibrates so strangely 
through space, as being made^ but "called forth" 
— commanded to shine. 

In Job xxxviii: 13, 14, we read of the day- 
spring, that it ''takes hold of the ends of the 
earth; it is turned as clay to the seal, and they 
stand as a garment. " In Babylon cylindrical 
seals were used. As they rolled over the clay, 
they left an impress of artistic beauty. What 
was without form, before, now stands out in bold 
relief like sculpture — and so, as the earth revolves, 
and brings each portion of its surface successive- 
ly under the sun s light and heat, what was before 
dull, dark, dead, discloses and developes beauty; 
and the clay stands like a garment, curiously 
wrought in bold relief and brilliant colors. Take 
that, either as science or poetry, and where, in 
any other book of equal antiquity, can you find 
the like? 

And how exquisite is that phrase ''takes hold 
of the ends of the earth!" The Hebrew word 
conveys the idea of the rays of light bending like 
the fingers of the hand, to lay hold, and this is 
spoken only of the ends of the earth. The direct 
ray of the sun falling upon its surface, comes, 
straight as an arrow; but, when the sunlight 
would touch the extremities of the earth, it is bent 
by the atmosphere so as to come into contact, and, 
but for this, vast portions, out of the direct line 
of the sun's rays would be dark, cold and dead. 



130 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Who taught Job, 1500 years or more before 
Christ, to use terms that Longfellow or Tennyson 
might covet, to describe refraction! 

Job xxxviii: 7. ''When the morning stars 
sang together" has been always taken to be a high 
flight of poetry. And when in Psalm Ixv: 8, we 
read, "Thou makest the outgoings of the morning 
and evening to rejoice," the Hebrew word means 
to give forth a tremulous sound, or as the voice 
in vibrations — to sing. Modern science flings a 
ray of discovery across these poetic expressions, 
and scientific truth seems hidden or wrapped up 
in them. Light comes to the eye in undulations 
or vibrations, as sound comes to the ear. There 
is a point at which vibrations are too rapid or 
delicate to be detected by our sense of hearing; 
then a more delicate organ, the eye, takes note 
of them; they appeal to the optic, instead of the 
auditory, nerve — and as light and not sound. 
Must not light then also sing? The lowest tone 
we can hear is made by 16.5 vibrations of air per 
second; the highest so shrill and "fine that noth- 
ing lives 'twixt it and silence," is made by 38,000 
vibrations per second. Between these extremes 
lie eleven octaves; C of the G clef having 258 ^ 
vibrations to the second, and its octave above 
517^. Not that sound-vibrations cease at 38,000, 
but our organs are not fitted to hearl^eyond those 
limitations. Were our ears delicate enough, we 
could hear even up to the almost infinite vibra- 
tions of light. And so it is literally true that 
"the morning stars sang together." We miscon- 
strued this other passage in the Psalms, which we 
could not understand and dared not translate as 
it stood in the grand old inspired Hebrew, till 



SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORD. 131 

"science crept up to a perception of the truth that 
had been standing there for ages uninterpreted, 
waiting for a mind that could take it in.'* And 
now we dare to read it as it stands — "Thou makest 
the outgoings, or radiations of Hght — ot the morn- 
ing and evening, to sing, i. e.^ to give forth sound 
by vibration.'' Were our senses fine enough, we 
could hear the separate key note of every individ- 
ual star. Shakespeare wrote unconscious truth, 
when he sang, 

**There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, 
But in his motion, like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim. 
Such harmony is in immortal souls; 
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 

Stars differ in glory and power; and so in the 
volume and pitch of their song.* In the future 
life our senses will doubtless be so delicate and 
refined that we shall be able to hear not only the 
separate key notes, but the infinite swelling har- 
mony of these myriad stars of the sky as they 
pour their mighty tide of harmonious anthems 
into the, ear of God. Then shall we be able to 
understand the truth of the hymn: 

"In reason's ear they all rejoice. 
And utter forth a glorious voice; 
Forever singing, as they shine, 
The hand that made us is divine!" 

The music of the spheres is not monotonous. 
Stars draw near each other and make a light that 
is unapproachable by mortals; then the music 
swells beyond our ability to endure. They recede 
far away, making a light so dim that the music 

*Dr. Warren: Recreations in Astronomy, p. 27. 



132 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

dies away so near to silence that only spirits can 
hear it. No wonder God rejoices in His works. 
He sits in the midst of a universal orchestra — that 
pours into His ear one ceaseless tide of rapturous 
song. He dwells in the midst of light; to us it 
is only ineffable glory; to Him it is music! 

Job xxviii: 25. "To assign to the wind (at- 
mosphere or breath) its weight, and to the waters 
their just measure." If there be anything which 
seems without weight, it is the air — the breath 
that rises as it issues from the mouth. Aristotle 
and even Bacon knew not that there was weight 
to the atmosphere! The discovery of the gravity 
of the air was reserved for the great Florentine 
astronomer, Galileo. And yet Job, at least thirty 
centuries before Galileo, declared that God as- 
signed weight even to the atmosphere! 

There is danger of pressing the words of the 
Bible into a positive announcement of scientific 
facts, so marvellous are some of these correspond- 
ences. But it is certainly a curious fact that Sol- 
omon should use language entirely consistent 
with discoveries as to evaporation and storm-cir- 
cuits.* Some have boldly said that Redfield's 
theory of storms is here explicitly stated. With- 
out taking such ground, we ask, who taught Sol- 
omon to use terms that readily accommodate the 
facts, that the movements of the winds, which 
seem to be so lawless and uncertain, are ruled by 
laws as positive as those which rule the growth of 
the plant; and that, by evaporation, the waters 
that fall on the earth are continually rising again, 
so that the sea never overflows! 



•^Eccles. I: 6, 7. 



SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORD. 133 

V. Entomology. If any department of science 
may be considered already complete in its re- 
searches it is that which classifies the insects so 
completely that it has found 70,000 varieties of 
beetle alone. Solomon can hardly be considered 
up to modern level, and some have considered 
his mistake as quite too bad to be admitted into 
inspired writings, when he represented the ant 
as ''providing her meat in summer and gathering 
her food in the harvest. '' The scientific sceptic 
affirms that the ant being a carnivorous insect, 
could not gather her food in the harvest, and that 
the very nature of that food would prevent it from 
being laid up in store; and that Solomon commit- 
ted the blunder of many amateurs, in mistaking 
the white cocoon of the ant-pupae, properly known 
as ant-eggs, for grains housed for future use. But 
what becomes, of Solomon's inspiration? If he 
blunders in science he may have blundered in 
theology. Nor can we defend him, on the ground 
that the word translated, ant, should be otherwise 
rendered; for the word not only means, ant, but 
Buxtorf says it means a seed-eating ant. 

When, however, we study the ants of Pales- 
tine, we find among them some species which not 
only feed on seeds, but harvest them; and if 
their stores are wet by the heavy rains, to prevent 
their sprouting, they bring them to the surface 
and dry them in the sun. More than this, late 
discovery shows that the agricultural ant not only 
stores grain but prepares the soil for the crop, 
plants the seed, keeps the ground free of weeds, 
and reaps the harvest; so that all Solomon says 
of the ants of Palestine, as exemplifying fore- 
thought and economy, is more than justified by 



134 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

facts! and so here is another of the *' mistakes" 
which Solomon did not make. What becomes of 
the inspiration of the scientists, who charged him 
with blunders! 

For what has Modern Science more earnestly 
contended than for the Reign of Law throughout 
the creation of God! Yet mark the stress laid by 
the Bible on this fact, that even those things, 
which seem most capricious and uncertain, are 
under the centrol of fixed order. The rain obeys 
a decree and the thunder and lightning move obe- 
dient to law- the sea can go but so far, and the 
wind returns according to his circuits. Sir John 
Herschel was so much impressed with the har- 
mony between the facts of physical science and 
the Word of God that he remarked: *'all human 
discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose 
of confirming more strongly the truths that have 
come from on high and are contained in the sacred 
writings. " 

VI. The Bible proves consistent with mod- 
ern discoveries in Physiology , Comparative Anat- 
omy and Chemistry, Physiology is a marvel- 
ous commentary on the exclamation of David, 
'*I am fearfully and w^onderfully made." The 
science of anatomy can find no error in the nar- 
rative of our Lord's crucifixion; and a living phy- 
sician was probably saved from ilifidelity by 
observing the unconscious truthfulness of the 
evangelists, in their account of the crucifixion, as 
to anatomical facts, then entirely unknown to 
ence.* 

Eccles. xii: 6, is a poetic description of death. 

* Phelps on Preaching, 153. 



SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORD. 135 

How that silver cord describes the spinal marrow, 
the golden bowl, the basin which holds the brain, 
the pitcher the lungs, and the wheel, the heart! 
Without claiming that Solomon was inspired to 
foretell the circulation of the blood, twenty-six 
hundred years before Harvey announced it — is it 
not very remarkable that the language he uses 
exactly suits the fact — a wheel, pumping up 
through one pipe, to discharge through another? 

VH. Ethnology, The Bible unquestionably 
teaches the unity of the human race. Is this 
reconcilable with the discoveries of ethnology? 

It has been urged that there must have been 
more than one original stock from which the race 
has sprung; that the varieties of color and form, 
brain-development, and physical type, cannot be 
accounted for by climate, food, and habits of life; 
that the negro, at least, belongs to another spe- 
cies. Some, disposed not to contend for the unity 
of the race, and yet to defend the Bible, take a 
middle ground, that the Bible gives the history of 
only one of the races — that, through whom came 
the redemption — forgetting that if the whole race 
has not sprung from Adam, the unity of the race 
both in sin and redemption is gone! 

It is unfair to say that the Bible and anthro- 
pology or ethnology are at war. First, because 
the scientific facts are not yet settled. The men 
who have most diligently studied these subjects 
do not agree among themselves. Blumenbach 
insists on five varieties — Caucasian, Mongolian, 
Ethiopian, Malay, American; Cuvier makes three 
grand divisions; Prichard affirms seven races, 
Luke Burke sixty-three, Retzius two, and Dr. 
Pickering eleven, which he thinks may be reduced 



136 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOI S. 

to one! Camper insists on the facial angle as the 
basis of division. Cuvier adopts as the basis, the 
comparative areas of the cranium and face sawed 
vertically on the median line. While scientific 
men are not agreed as to the facts, why need we 
seek to make their theories fit its doctrine? When 
one well-ascertained fact is found to be irrecon- 
cilable with the Bible, then, and not till then, may 
there be ground for alarm. 

Almost all this outcry of hostility between 
science and God's Word is based upon specula- 
tion. Some infidel thinks he has found out some 
new fact, and makes haste to announce it. He 
crams it into his gun and then fires, and expects 
to see the defenses of the Christian faith totter 
and tumble under the tremendous shock of his 
artillery. But, lo, the fortress stands, and there 
is not even a hole or breach in the wall. And 
when we come to examine, what w^as it that the 
great scientist hurled against the walls? Some 
huge, solid shot of fact? No; a mere paper-wad 
of his own fanciful theory, that took fire from his 
own powder! 

Again we say, show us one undoubted fact, re- 
vealed by scientific studies for two thousand years, 
that cannot be harmonized with the word of God! 
Not only can there be shown no conflict between 
the facts and the Bible doctrine of the unity of 
the race, but the whole drift of discovery, so far 
as it becomes clear and positive, is toward the 
confirmation of that unity. In man, the world 
over, we find the same grand physical character- 
istics: the same number of teeth and bones and 
muscles; the same system of respiration and cir- 
culation, digestion, secretion; nerves, veins and 



SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORD. 137 

arteries are arranged on the same type. Man is 
everywhere capable of living on all kinds of food, 
in any climate; liable to the same diseases; grows 
to maturity slowly, and lives to the same average 
age. Dr. Prichard contends for the unity of the 
original stock from the fertility of the race in off- 
spring. "Nature abhors hybrids,'* and varieties 
produced in the vegetable or animal world, by the 
crossing of species, speedily run out; and hence 
the fact that, after six thousand years, intermar- 
riage between individuals of different varieties is 
still fertile in offspring, proves one original species. 
Dr. Prichard traces all existing varieties of the 
human family to secondary causes, and finds 
among different tribes or nations no permanent 
lines of division. 

Man, and even animals, when subjected to a 
change of climate or manner of life, change color, 
hair and form. Dr. Carpenter instances the Mag- 
yar race in Hungary, known to have belonged to 
the Asiatic stock. About a thousand years since, 
they came from the cold north of Asia to the 
sunny south of Europe, and not only have their 
habits of life all changed, but even the type of 
cranial formation from the pyramidal or Mongolian 
to the elliptical or Caucasian; and, with their im- 
proved physical stature and feature, there is just 
enough of the Tartar cast to give a hint of their 
origin. And so as to the Lapps and Finns; Dr. 
Carpenter says that, though from one common 
stock with the Magyars, the most marked differ- 
ences have developed even in cranial characters, 
and general conformation, stature and propor- 
tion. 

In India, Persians, Greeks, Tartars, Turks and 



138 MANY INFALIJBLE TROOFS. 

Arabs, all white men, and without intermarriage 
with the Hindus, in a few generations become 
marked with the deep olive color natural to the 
climate, almost as dark as the negro; and the 
Portuguese, in three hundred years' residence 
there, have been dyed black as Kaffirs. Rev. 
John Campbell, years ago, observed that, as he 
moved from the southern cape toward equatorial 
Africa, the people uniformly grew darker; and 
the colony of Jews on the coast of Malabar are 
now as black as the natives of the coast. If cli- 
mate may produce such marked changes in one 
direction, who is competent to say what changes 
all combined causes may produce during thou- 
sands of years? Von Humboldt, after stating the 
arguments for diversity of origin, gives his opin- 
ion that more weighty reasons favor unity; and 
certainly he will not be accused of superficial sci- 
ence or of undue bias toward the Bible. 

Even the diversity of language, once thought 
to favor diversity of stock, is no longer an argu- 
ment against the Word of God. The new science 
of comparative philology is grouping these tongues 
into families, and tracing them back by affinities 
and resemblances to one great root ; and Klaproth 
illustrates the universal kinship of languages by 
the bricks with which Bagdad is built, and which 
bear the cuneiform legend of Nebuchadnezzar 
stamped upon them — showing that they are frag- 
ments of old Assyrian cities. Even so, modern 
tongues exhibit the fragments of an earlier prim- 
itive language. And so physiology and philology, 
and psychology and ethnology, all witness to that 
grand old conception of the Bible, that all men 
sprang from one original pair. 



SCIENTIFIC IRUTH OF THE WORD. 139 

As to the antiquity of man, science has not 
presented one clearly established fact to show 
that the human race existed on earth earlier than 
the accepted chronology of the Bible places man's 
creation. Most so-called proof is simply wild con- 
jecture, jumping at conclusions; and sometimes 
the jump is such a big one that such science has 
been called ''grasshopper science," or ''kangaroo 
science. " It claims to present the results of orig- 
inal investigation, though, as Parke Godwin says, 
"the originality is apt to surpass the investiga- 
tion. " 

The facts which seem to argue a greater an- 
tiquity for the human race are simply mysteries 
that await interpretation. For example, bones 
have been found, cut and polished, in deposits 
which seem to have been immersed in water since 
man dwelt on earth, yet so finely cut and polished 
as, in the opinion of many, to prove human skill, 
aided, too, by instruments of rare perfection. 
Sir Charles Lyell, however, ventured to put among 
the beavers in the zoological gardens in London 
some bones similar to those discovered, and, after 
leaving them for some time, recovered them, cut 
and polished by the beavers, so nearly like the 
others as to leave no doubt that in both cases the 
same agency had been employed. So, in this 
case, the pre-Adamite man proved to be a beaver, 
and the perfect tools, which argued such high civ- 
ilization, the beaver's teeth! 

VIII. As yet we have not touched that broad 
field of Archceology where some of the richest, 
ripest harvests have been reaped for the confirma- 
tion of the Word of God. We present two or 
three, out of the immense mass of constantly ac- 



140 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

cumulating facts, which show that God is taking 
the wise in their own craftiness. Sceptics have 
been confident that, from the discoveries brought 
to Hght by the archaeologist and paleontologist, 
the Word of God would be proved at best a harm- 
less fable; but lo, while we hold our peace, the 
very stones cry out in confirmation of the Word. 

We read in ancient history that the King of 
Babylon at the time of its destruction was not 
Belshazzar, but Nabonadius, or Labynetus, and 
that he was neither captured nor killed, but es- 
caped, and that after the taking of the city he 
fought a battle outside the capital, was beaten, 
made prisoner, and subsequently a satrap under 
the conqueror, living in luxury and dying in peace. 
And so the scientific sceptics laughed at the cre- 
dulity of the simple souls who take the Bible as 
their guide, though it asserts that Belshazzar was 
king when Babylon fell, and on the night of its 
capture was slain. But over twenty years ago, 
from the mounds that mark the almost forgotten 
site of the great city, there was dug up a great 
cylinder, inscribed with curious records, and from 
these we learn that Belshazzar was the son of Na- 
bonadius and a regent under him; and now the 
inconsistency is explained. Belshazzar, sharing 
the throne of his father, was slain at Babylon. 
His father, Nabonadius, escaped and survived the 
fall of. his capital. Out of the ruins of buried 
cities rises a new witness to the Word. 

Again, as to the Deluge. Assyrian tablets 
now in the British Egyptian museum, dating 660 
B. C, copying and preserving an older record 
1700 B. C, contain a pagan description of the 
flood, declare it to have been decreed by God on 



SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORD. i41 

account of man's wickedness, and record the fact 
of a great ship being built, birds being sent out, 
an altar being built, etc, 

St. Luke calls Sergius Paulus the proconsul 
of Cyprus. Historians insisted that his proper 
title must have been procurator; yet even an in- 
accuracy could not be tolerated in the evangelist's 
record. But lately ancient coins have come to 
light bearing the image of Claudius, and apply- 
ing to the representative of Rome who governed 
Cyprus the very name, proconsul, which Luke ap- 
plies to Sergius Paulus! The further modern in- 
vestigation goes, the more is Holy Scripture 
established; every new discovery among the mon- 
umental records of antiquity adds a new witness 
to God's blessed book. Wonderful, indeed, that 
the Bible should be so framed and worded that, 
though never clearly announcing scientific facts, 
'* in advance of the science of the age," it proves, 
when correctly interpreted, to be always *' abreast 
of the science" of any age. 

With a lofty air of papal infallibility, a scep- 
tical writer declares that "every step that science 
takes leads mankind farther away from the idle 
hopes and fears of Christianity toward the calm 
of eternal truth." Whereupon Dr. Stebbins, him- 
self a Unitarian, and an advocate of "liberal" 
views, dares a flat denial: "I afiirm most deliber- 
ately, after nearly fifty years' study of science as 
well as theology, with the ardor of a lover, that 
there is not a single discovery or accepted fact of 
science which, in the slightest degree, militates 
against the teachings of Christianity as revealed 
in the gospels." 

The Word of God cannot be demolished by 



J 4IJr MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

the ridicule of its foes. Voltaire may have many 
disciples who follow his method, and seek to cover 
God's Word with caricature as a modern ''smart" 
boy disfigures with charcoal the face and form of 
some antique Apollo. But as the statue remains 
in its ideal perfection when the mischievous mark- 
ings are washed away, so the pure celestial beauty 
of the Word survives all attempts to invest it with 
blasphemous absurdity. Nor can scientific as- 
sumption and presumption upset the certainties of 
a divine revelation. A falsehood is no more true 
because loudly spoken, and with gesticulation that 
attempts to pound conviction into the hearer. As 
Mr. Lincoln assured Mr. Bates that "calling a 
sheep's tail a leg does not make it so," we insist 
that even the sanction of a great name does not 
necessarily establish the verity and accuracy of a 
statement. Many a man who is very safe in the 
department of investigation, and perfectly trust- 
worthy so long as he confines himself to the sim- 
ple results of observation and experiment, is as 
unsafe whenever he ventures into the department 
of philosophy or logic, and attempts to draw in- 
ferences from his investigations; his conclusions 
may be as inaccurate and unsound as his experi- 
ments are careful and exact. The fact is, investi- 
gation and induction belong to different depart- 
ments; and we are not always to adopt the infer- 
ences even of the most accurate investigator. 

Scientific men are not always intellectually 
honest and candid. Biased in favor of a certain 
scientific creed, or religious system, they become 
intellectual squinters; they see only what they 
want to see, and array facts and figures adroitly 
on the side of preconceived opinion or notion. 



SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORD. 143 

What, then, shall we do with the Bible? It 
comes before the tribunal of reason, and asks for an 
impartial judgment. It may be the best of books, 
yet by no means be the book of God. Yet how 
can it be si ply the book of man? Even its ap- 
parent contradictions, when closely examined, 
reveal a deeper law of harmony, like the lines of 
the Doric column — once thought to be vertical 
and parallel, but now found to incline and con- 
verge, so as to meet if carried upward to a point 
above the column. 

The witness which the Word contains within 
itself is what Chalmers called the ''portable evi- 
dence'* of Christianity. And it has this grand 
advantage: if within the Word, it may be found 
there by the dilligent seeker. It is said, the shell 
sings of the sea; it may easily be tested if we put 
it to the ear and listen. Does the Bible speak of 
ics own divine origin? then we have only to listen 
with attentive ears; shutting out other voices — the 
clamors of prejudice and pride, wilful unbelief 
and waywardness of heart- — and we shall hear 
the music of the celestiaL. 

We ought daily to ''search the Scriptures." 
So did the noble people of Berea, with readiness 
of mind to find their hidden testimony; and there- 
fore many of them believed! But it must be 
search, and not the careless, cursory glance which 
unveils and reveals nothing. We are told of a 
famous jevv^el in the green vaults at Dresden; the 
egg with its silver white, its golden yolk, within 
the yolk a precious gem. The best is farthest 
within, always, and he whose hand touches only 
the shell finds not the treasures that lay hidden from 
the common, careless eye, as in "drusic" cavities 



144 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Let US learn of the bee. See him aHght on 
the flower and Hnger there, thrusting his trunk 
down into the heart of the bloom, where the sweet 
juices lie in a flask fairer than alabaster. Honest, 
earnest, studious searching of the Scriptures, lin- 
gering on the heavenly blossoms, the patient and 
prayerful penetration which touches the heart of 
the Word of God, is our great need. He who 
sucks the honey needs no other proof that the 
flower-cup holds the nectar! He who has stored 
the symmetrical cells of memory and heart with 
the treasures of God's truth, and has found full 
satisfaction and delight in it, needs no other proof. 
He exclaims: 

**How sweet is thy Word unto my taste! 
Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE. 

"I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment 
is exceeding broad."- -Psalm cxix: 96. 

Everything human has a limit to its apparent 
perfection Trace it far enough, or examine it 
thoroughly enough, and you will find defects if 
not deformities. Everything born of man or pro- 
duced by him is faulty, mixed up with error. Our 
watches we correct by the chronometer and the 
chronometer must be regulated by the sun; for 
"beneath the stars nothing goes right. " But God's 
law reveals no defects. It has no limit to its per- 
fection. 

There was in the Roman Forum, a gilt pillar 
erected by Augustus, and known as ''Milliarium 
Aureum" or *'the golden milestone." There, all 
the principal Roman roads centered and termin- 
ated; and thence radiated to the remotest verge 
of civilization, running in all directions, as far 
as the silver eagles had triumphantly borne the 
standards of the empire! 

The Bible is the Golden Milestone of the ages. 
It has been for thousands of years the grand cen- 
ter of all the noblest thought, purest love, and 
holiest life of the world. All roads converge 
here. The great highways of human progress 
radiate from this shining center. From this great 
book proceeds the inspiration of the best litera- 



146 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

ture, the most unselfish philanthropy, the most 
faultless morality, which the world has ever known. 
Whence came the Bible? Is this the accidental 
point of all this convergence; or is it the designed 
focus of all this light, love and life ? Was this golden 
pillar erected by one infinitely more august than 
the foremost of the Caesars, to be the center and 
source of all human progress? Did God put the 
Bible in the very Forum of the nations, that by 
all paths men might, in the honest search after 
truth, find in this their goal; and that, from this, 
as a starting point, every true lover of God and 
man might proceed in his noble career of service? 
This is the decisive test. No literary excellence, 
no scientific accuracy, no perfection, as a book, 
could atone for one vital error in ethical teaching 
or moral precept, in a volume which claims the 
high dignity of being a guide to the human soul, 
in matters of faith and life, doctrine and duty! 

Suppose that no revelation of God's will had 
ever been made to man, through any such chan- 
nel; but that, in some way, we were led to look 
for a written communication from God. What 
sort of a book w^ould we expect? We would sure- 
ly be warranted in anticipating in such a volume, 
the following characteristics: i. It would be in- 
telligible, a clear revelation, and capable of being 
understood by the average man. a. It would be 
consistent, that is, its testimony would be essen- 
tially one, united, harmonious witness. 3. It 
would be transcendent, far surpassing all human 
teachings in the tone of its precepts, and bearing 
the impress of a divine mind and heart in its 
whole structure. 4. It would be practical, touch- 
ing the actual needs of man, at the most vital 



MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE. 147 

points of contact. We cannot imagine even the 
human channel of the divine communication as 
seriously affecting the result. After making lib- 
eral allowance for human imperfection, and the 
imperfection of human language, we insist, on 
God's behalf, that whatever claims to represent 
his will shall in all these particulars correspond 
with the high claim. If the Holy Ghost shall 
pour the light of heaven into the dark chambers 
of this world, no necessary imperfection in the 
window panes through which it streams, can es- 
sentially diminish its glory. It may suffer some 
absorption or refraction or take some hue or tint 
in its passage, but it will still be recognized as 
light from above. 

I. The Unity or consistency of the Bible is a 
grand argument in its favor. It is a collection of 
books, written at different times, and by different 
persons, at intervals through some sixteen cen- 
turies. In the style and character of these books, 
there is surprising variety and diversity; some are 
historical, others poetical; some contain laws, 
others lyrics; some are prophetic, some symbolic: 
in the New Testament we have four gospels, one 
historic narrative, and twenty-one epistles fol- 
lowed by a symbolic poem in the most oriental 
imagery. And yet this is no artificial arrange- 
ment of fragments. We find "the Old Testament 
patent in the new; the new latent in the old!" 

The various books of the Bible are entirely at 
agreement. There is diversity in unity and unity 
in diversity; **e pluribus unum. " There is some- 
times apparent divergence, at first; but further 
search shews real harmony. As in a stereoscope, 
the two pictures sometimes will not come together. 



148 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

but as we continue to look, and the eye rests on 
some particular point, one view is seen; so in the 
Word of God. The more we study it, the more 
its unity and harmony appear. Even the law and 
the gospel are not in conflict. They stand like 
the cherubim, facing different ways, but toward 
each other; and the four gospels, like the cherubic 
creature in Ezekiel's vision, facing in four different 
directions, move in one. All the criticism of 
more than three thousand years has failed to point 
out one important or irreconcilable contradiction 
in the testimony and teachings of those who are 
farthest separated — there is no collision, yet there 
could be no collusion. 

In such a book there would not be likely to 
be unity; for all the human conditions were un- 
favorable. No other book was ever com- 
posed or compiled in circumstances so disadvan- 
tageous to a harmonious moral testimony and 
teaching. Here are some sixty or more separate 
documents, written by some forty different per- 
sons, scattered over wide intervals of space and 
time, strangers to each other; these documents 
are written in three different languages, in differ- 
ent lands, with marked diversities of literary style, 
and by men of all grades of culture and mental 
capacity from Moses to Malachi; and there is in 
them great unlikeness both in matter and manner 
of statement; and yet in not one respect are their 
doctrinal and ethical teachings in conflict; from 
beginning to end, we find in them a positive one- 
ness of doctrine, which amazes us. Even where, 
at first glance, there appears to be conflict, as be- 
tween Paul and James, we find, on closer exam- 
ination that, instead of standing face to face, 



MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE. 149 

beating each other, they stand back to back, 
beating off common foes. And, most wonderful 
of all, this moral unity could not be fully under- 
stood till the book was completed. The process 
of preparation, like a scaffolding about a building, 
obscured its beauty — even the workmen upon it 
could not appreciate its harmony — but, when 
John added the cap-stone and declared that noth- 
ing further should be added, the scaffolding fell, 
and a grand cathedral was revealed. 

To appreciate this strong argument for the di- 
vine origin of the Bible, try this test in a supposed 
case. Imagine another book, compiled by as 
many authors, scattered over as many centuries! 
Herodotus contributes a historic fragment on the 
origin of all things, in the fifth century before 
Christ; a century later Aristotle adds a book on 
moral philosophy; two centuries pass and Cicero 
adds a work on law and government; still another 
hundred years and Virgil furnishes a grand poem 
on ethics; in the next century Plutarch supplies 
some biographical sketches; two hundred years 
after, Origen adds essays on religious creeds and 
conduct; a century and a half later, Augustine 
writes a treatise on theology, and Chrysostom a 
book of sermons; then seven centuries pass away 
and Abelard completes the compilation by a mag- 
nificent series of essays on rhetoric and scholastic 
philosophy. And between these extremes, which, 
like the Bible, span fifteen centuries, let us imag- 
ine all along from Herodotus to Abelard thirty or 
forty other contributors whose works enter into 
the final result, men of different nations, periods, 
habits, languages, and education; under the best 
conditions, how much moral unity could be ex- 



150 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

pected, even if each successive contributor had 
read all that preceded his own fragment? 

Have you heard Thomas* grand orchestra? 
See how, as that baton rises and falls in the hand 
of the Conductor, from violin and bass viol, cornet 
and flute, trombone and trumpet, flageolet and 
clarinet, bugle and French horn, cymbals and 
drum, there comes one grand harmony! You 
have no doubt, though the conductor were 
screened from view, that one master mind con- 
trols all the instrumental performers. But God 
makes His oratorio to play for more than a thou- 
sand years, and where one musician becomes 
silent another takes up the strain, and yet it is all 
one grand symphony — the key is never lost and 
never changes, except by those exquisite modula- 
tions that show the composer; and when the last 
strain dies away you see that all these glorious 
movements and melodies have been variations of 
one grand theme! Did each musician compose as 
he played, or was there one composer back of the 
many players? **one supreme and regulating 
mind'* in this Oratorio of the Ages? If God was 
the master musician, planning the whole and ar- 
ranging the parts, appointing player to succeed 
player, and one strain to modulate or melt into 
another, then we can understand how Moses' 
grand anthem of Creation glides into Isaiah's ora- 
torio of the Messiah, by and by sinks into Jere- 
miah's plaintive wail, swells into Ezekiel's awful 
chorus, changes into Daniel's rapturous lyric, and 
after the quartette of the Evangelists, closes with 
John's full choir of Saints and Angels! 

How can it be accounted for? There is no 
answer which can be given unless you admit the 



MORAL BEAUTV OF THE BIBLE. 151 

supernatural element. If God actually superin- 
tended the production of this book, so that all 
who contributed to it were guided by Him, then 
its unity is the unity of a divine plan and its har- 
mony the harmony of a supreme intelligence and 
will! 

We are told of the temple, first built upon Mt. 
Moriah, that it was built of stone, made ready 
before it was brought thither, so that there was 
neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron 
heard in the house, while it was in building. The 
stone was cut, squared, polished and fitted to its 
place in the quarry, before it was brought to the 
temple platform — the beams and boards, were all 
wrought into the desired form and shape in the 
shops; and when the material for the temple was 
on the ground nothing was necessary but to put 
it together. What was it which insured symmetry 
in the temple when constructed, and harmony be- 
tween the workmen in the quarries and the shops, 
and the builders on the hill? There must have 
been one presiding mind that planned the whole. 
There was one brain or intelligence that built that 
whole structure in ideal before it was in fact. The 
builders built wiser than they knew; they were 
putting together the ideas of the architect wrought 
in stone, and not their own ideas! 

In some such way alone can we account for 
the singular unity of the Word of God. The Bible 
is a structure planned and wrought out in the 
mind of a divine Architect, who, through the ages, 
superintended His own workmen and work. Mo- 
ses laid its foundations, not knowing who should 
build up after him, or what form the structure 
should assume. Workman after workman fol- 



152 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

lowed; he might see that there was agreement 
with what went before, but he could not foresee 
that what should come after would be only the 
sublime carrying out of the grand plan. And yet 
what is the case? No one disputes the singular 
unity of the structure; and yet, during all those 
sixteen centuries, through which the building rose 
toward completion, there was no sound of axe or 
hammer, no chipping or hacking to make one part 
fit its fellow. Everything is in agreement with 
everything else, because the whole Bible was built 
in the thought of God before one book was laid 
in the order of its construction! 

You cannot look on that cathedral at Milan, 
whose first stone was laid March 15, 1386, and 
which, after these five centuries, is yet incomplete, 
without instinctively knowing that it must have 
been the product of one mind, however many 
workmen may have helped to rear its marble walls 
and pinnacles. Its unity of design cannot be the 
result of accident. No, the workmen were not the 
architect. Every stone was shaped and polished 
to fit its place in the plan. And so of the Bible: 
that cathedral of the ages! Whoever the work- 
men were, the Architect was God! 

This unity appears the more marvellous when 
we observe the progressive development of rev- 
elation. One of the finest scholarsx)f Britain, in 
one of the grandest books of the century, has 
devoted the powers of his master-mind to tracing 
the ''Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament. " 
He shows that, although there could have been 
no such intent or intelligencein the writers' minds, 
and although the books of the New Testament 
are not even arranged in the order of their pro- 



MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE. 153 

duction, that order could not, in one instance, be 
changed without impairing or destroying the sym- 
metry of the book, and that there is a regular 
progress in the unfolding of doctrine, from the 
Gospel according to Matthew to the Revelation. 

A wider examination will show the very same 
progress of doctrine from corner-stone to cap- 
stone; from foundations first, then story after 
story, pillars on pedestals and capitals on pillars, 
and arches on capitals, till, like a dome, flashing 
back the splendors of the noonday, the Apoca- 
lypse spans and crowns and completes the whole, 
glorious with celestial visions. 

The unity of the Bible is organic. Now the 
unity of a building is not organic. It is a unity 
of plan, of construction, of material, but you may 
take down the spire of a church and put up an- 
other; replace the windows by memorial windows 
making each a crystal monument of some de- 
parted friend; and change all the wood work in 
its interior; and yet the unity and completeness 
of the building are not affected. But if a human 
body loses an eye, a finger, or a joint, it is maimed; 
its completeness is gone; its unity violated; and 
nothing can ever supply the lack of that lost por- 
tion, however insignificant. 

The Bible is a unity in this, that not one of 
all its books could be lost without maiming the 
body of truth here contained. Every book has 
a place which it fills. You may not at a single 
glance discover its use, or see why it is necessary 
to the plan of the book, but it is the fault of your 
ignorance; each book fills a place in the great 
plan; God's stamp is on this organic unity. 

Take one example. The book of Esther has . 



154 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

been thought by some unnecessary to the com- 
pleteness of the canon. Why, it is said, "It does 
not even contain the name of God." But that 
book critically studied proves a singularly com- 
plete exhibition of the Providence of God. It 
teaches an unseen hand behind human affairs; 
certain ultimate awards to the evil and the good; 
it exhibits this providential rule in the uncertainty 
and unsatisfactoriness of the prosperity of the 
wicked, and in the prosperity that ultimately 
comes to the good even out of their adversities; 
it shows how retribution is sometimes poetically 
exact in the very forms of punishment. And 
that we may not confound God's Providence with 
a bald fatalism that takes away human freedom 
and responsibility, it shows us how the prayerful 
resolution and action of God's servants and the 
unbiased freedom of His enemies, are consistent 
with His overruling sovereignty; and how all 
things work together to produce all grand results. 
We see the ministry of most minute matters in 
furthering Providential plans. The book that 
thus exhibits God's Providence — His universal 
sovereignty, the universal harmony, divine retri- 
bution and human responsibility, does not once 
contain the name of God; for it is meant to teach 
us of the Hidden Hand that, behind the scenes, 
unseen, moves and controls all things. 

Cuvier has brought out into grand scientific 
statement the unity of organized being. He finds 
that, in every case, it forms a whole — a complete 
system, all the parts of which mutually corre- 
spond. None of these parts can change without 
the others also changing; and consequently each 
taken separately indicates and gives all the others. 



MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE. 155 

For instance, the sharp-pointed tooth of the lion 
requires a strong jaw; these demand a skull, fitted 
for the attachment of powerful muscles, both for 
moving the jaw and raising the head; a broad, 
well-developed shoulder-blade must accompany 
such a head; and there must be an arrangement 
of bones of the leg which admits of the leg-paw 
being rotated and turned upward, in order to be 
used as an instrument to seize and tear the prey; 
and, of course, there must be strong claws arming 
the paw. Hence, from one tooth the entire ani- 
mal could be modelled, though the species had 
perished. 

So the unity of the Bible is the unity of one 
organism, where each part demands all the others. 
The Decalogue demands the Sermon on the Mount. 
Isaiah's prophecy makes necessary the narrative of 
the Evangelists. Daniel fits into the Revelation 
as bone fits socket, or as those strange bones in 
the vertebral column naturally form the axis of 
the neck. You cannot understand Leviticus with- 
out the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Psalms ex- 
press the highest morality and spirituality of the 
Old Testament and anticipate the clearer beauty 
of the New; they link the Mosaic code with the 
divine ethics of the gospels and the epistles. The 
Passover foreshadowed the Lord's Supper, and 
the Lord's Supper interprets and fulfils the Pass- 
over. Even the little book of Jonah makes more 
complete the sublime Gospel according to John; 
and Ruth and Esther prophetically hint the Acts 
of the Apostles. Nay, look more closely, and 
after following the course of history, gospels and 
epistles, when you come to the last chapter of 
Revelation, you find yourself mysteriously touch- 



156 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

ing the first chapters of Genesis; and lo, as you 
survey the whole track of your thought, you find 
you have been following the perimeter of a golden 
ring; the extremities actually bend around, touch 
and so blend that no point of contact is detected. 
You read in the first of Genesis of the first crea- 
tion; in the last of Revelation, of the new crea- 
tion — the new heavens and the new earth; there, 
of the rivers that watered the garden: here, of 
the pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal; 
there, of the Tree of Life in the first Eden: here, 
of the Tree of Life which is in the midst of the 
Paradise of God; there, of the God who came 
down to talk and walk with man: here, that the 
Tabernacle of God is with men. There we read 
of the curse that came by sin — of the serpent 
whose trail is over all human joys; here we read, 
"and there shall be no more curse" — ''nothing 
shall enter that defileth or maketh a lie. " 

IL If the Bible be the Word of God, it will 
be clear and intelligible; else were it no Revelation. 
It must be clear to the average man — nay, to the 
lowest level of a complete manhood must a rev- 
elation from God descend. The Bible claims to 
be God's message to man as man. It unfolds a 
plan of redemption which reaches just as far and 
wide as the condemnation. The rescue must be 
as complete as the ruin; the salvatitjn must touch 
at every point the sin. That is no restoration 
which cannot repair the whole ruin. And, inas- 
much as all men are in sin and need salvation, 
the gospel must be so simple, plain, that any one 
who is capable of sinning may be capable of un- 
derstanding and appropriating salvation. Now, 
we find that wherever there is a human being who 



MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE. 157 

has passed the first stages of infancy and child- 
hood, and is not imbecile or idiotic; wherever 
there is a complete set of faculties, however unde- 
veloped, there may be voluntary sin, and so re- 
sponsibility. But if there be one human being 
who can sin and yet cannot receive the saving gos- 
pel, by sheer incapacity to understand it, there is 
ground for doubt that the gospel is of God. 

The world has had many wise and good teach- 
ers of morals, and some of them have been centers 
of grand influence. But every one of them has 
spoken to a class of men. The great masses have 
been shut out from their select circle by the very 
character of their teachings. The word mystery 
is of Greek origin, and means *'a revealed secret" 
which only the initiated could understand; and 
these were mysteries to the common people, 
and remained such because they demanded a 
measure of intelligence and capacity not possessed 
by the average man. By necessity, the philos- 
pher addressed the few. Aristotle originated the 
word metaphysics. He wrote first on ''physics," 
then "meta-ta-physica," "after the physics;" and 
what better expresses those subtleties which lie 
beyond the common mind? Suppose Aristotle's 
"Organon" contained the secret of salvation, how 
many sinners could from that find out the secret? 
Pythagoras was a great teacher; but he did not 
attempt to get a hold upon the masses. He wel- 
comed those who desired to be taught his myster- 
ies, and held them on probation till he should dis- 
cover who were able and worthy to be pupils; 
and they were the only ones to whom he attempted 
to reveal the hidden things of his philosophy. 
Hence came the distinction between the exoteric 



158 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and esoteric schools. These facts hint the drift 
of all merely human teaching upon moral and 
spiritual truths. Had it been complete in all other 
respects, here was a fundamental fatal lack: it did 
not reach and touch, it could not move and mould, 
all men; it was not fit for man as man. 

We open the blessed Book, and one of the 
first things which arrests our attention is the di- 
vine simplicity that is mingled with its awful sub- 
limity. The way of holiness is a plain and straight 
highway, not a narrow, obscure, crooked byway; 
"the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err 
therein." The vision is written plain upon the 
tablets, so that he may run that reads it. A child 
in years and understanding can understand all that 
is necessary to salvation. One of the first things 
which childhood shows is "trust," and trust is the 
soul of faith. Any child who can understand what 
it is, upon a dark and stormy night, when he had 
lost his way, to give up to a stronger arm a bur- 
den which he cannot longer carry, and give his 
hand to another hand, to be led to a home which 
he can no longer find, can understand what it is 
to let Christ bear his sins and guide him to heaven. 
Well might the Saviour of sinners set a child in 
the midst of men and bid them become as little 
children, for the learned and wise in this world 
of sin scorn and scout the gospel for its simplicity. 
And yet is it no sign that the true salvation is 
here, that we need not go up to heaven in order 
to bring a Saviour down, nor into hades to bring 
a Saviour up from the dead? God asks of us no 
such practical impossibilities, but only to believe 
in the heart and confess with the mouth. But, 
you ask, are there no mysteries in the Bible — no 



MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE. 159 

things "hard to be understood,'* high as heaven, 
deep as the abyss? Certainly there are; and were 
there not, would that not argue against the Bible? 
Does not the power wholly to comprehend the 
work of another hand or brain imply a certain 
equality? The very fact that there is about the 
product of another's genius what you and I cannot 
understand is a proof of genius — i. ^. , of a supe- 
rior order of faculties. I need do no more than 
hear Edison's phonograph repeat my sentences, to 
be convinced that the man who invented that ma- 
chine is no ordinary man. And a glance at the 
statues of Michael Angelo is enough to show me 
that that man was a prince even among artists! 

So the very mystery of God's works shows that 
they proceeded from no human hand. Let any 
man explain how a blade of grass grows, taking 
from earth, air, light and dew, just what it needs 
for its own structure, and building these elements 
into itself! The Word of God must show the God 
who inspired it. There must be thoughts above 
our thoughts, and ways above our ways, or it may 
be after all only a man's work! 

How can God's Word be at once intelligible 
and unintelligible, within our capacity and above 
it, clear and yet obscure? 

We need not stop to draw such subtle lines of 
distinction as that of Coleridge, between "appre- 
hension" and "comprehension." A thing may at 
the same time be sublime and simple. The pil- 
lar of cloud and of fire was a mystery. Who can 
tell, even now, how a cloud can move with a su- 
preme intelligence — now going before to lead the 
way, now resting to indicate a halt, and again go- 
ing behind to hide God's host from the pursuing 



160 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

foe? How can a cloud herald the night-shade by 
burning with a glory that midnight cannot quench? 
And yet the cloud led Israel, and nothing could 
be more simple than to go where it went, and 
stay where it stayed. Whatever was mysterious 
about the cloud did not interfere with its office as 
a guide. The ''secret things" belong to the Lord 
our God, but the ''revealed things" belong to us 
and our children, even all the words of this law! 
There are mysteries, but they are speculative; 
there are revealed things, and they are regulative; 
i. ^., while God does not answer our questions, 
"how?" and "why?" he does answer "what?" 
We never ask; Lord, what wilt thou have me to 
do? without a plain, prompt answer, not clouded 
by mystery or shadowed by obscurity. 

Mystery? Yes; and it would be a greater 
mystery if in a revelation from God there were not. 
Edward Irving compares the man who, with his 
finite knowledge, expects to understand all the 
deep things of God, to the little blind mole, run- 
ning his tiny galleries underground, undertaking 
to interpret the marchings and countermarchings 
of mighty armies overhead ! There are deep things 
about God, but none of them touch duty! You 
know not the mystery of motion — how the will is 
linked to the nerve, nerve to muscle, muscle to 
bone; and yet you can lift your arm and move 
your leg at will. And so, whatever mystery is in 
the Word, it does not becloud duty, or prevent 
us from walking in the path of obedience. This 
blessed Book acknowledges clouds and darkness 
to be round about Him; yet it never admits that 
clouds and darkness are round about the way that 
leads to Him. 



MORAL BEAUTY OF THE BIBLE. 161 

You gaze up at Mont Blanc; it is dim with 
the distance, and clouds wrap its summit as in a 
white shroud. But the clouds belong about lofty 
peaks; that is their natural home, and they make 
the mountain look grand and sublime. They are 
fitted to catch a thousand hues from the sunbeam, 
and wrap the awful peak in rainbow colors; they 
leave the snow and ice far up toward heaven, 
which, as they melt, distil pure, cool water for the 
springs far below. But, though clouds invest 
these summits thousands of feet above, there are 
no clouds about your pathway at the mountain's 
foot; here your path is plain and clear. And all 
this shows that you were not meant to live on that 
higher level. Those grand peaks are, like the 
stars they seem to touch, meant to look at and 
admire — to strike awe into your soul; but you 
could not abide up there; you would get lost. 
Those are slippery heights, whence many an am 
bitious climber falls to his own hurt. The air is 
too rare up there; you breathe with difficulty, 
and the cold is too intense. But here you walk 
safely, and your feet do not stumble. At this 
level everything is fitted to feed and nourish your 
life. 

Is it not so with the Bible? It is like some 
tall peak whose awful form, resting on the earth, 
reaches the stars. Its heights are infinite, distant, 
dim, enveloped in clouds, but glorious in their 
obscurity and mystery. Those heights were not 
meant for mortal feet to tread. Only angels can 
breathe that etherial atmosphere, or venture to 
explore the high and deep things of God. For 
you and me, those sublime heights are meant only 
that we may gaze, admire, adore. That is where 



162 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

the Bible touches God and heaven; we must only 
look and be lost in the glory. But where the Bi- 
ble touches the earth it touches our level; here 
are no clouds or darkness; all is light and plain 
and clear, because here lies the path of duty. 
True, we may, as we become more and more 
familiar with God's truth, climb higher, get more 
extended prospects, truer views of the relation 
between the here and the hereafter; but even then 
we shall only be overwhelmed with the depths of 
the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of 
God, and exclaim, **How unsearchable are His 
judgments, and His ways past finding out!" 
When we get as high as mortal can tread, we shall 
only say with Paul that there is a height and depth, 
a breadth and length, which pass knowledge. 

Blessed is he who is content to understand the 
way of duty, and who, in these divine mysteries 
which have to do with the higher things and 
deeper things of God, sees only an additional ev- 
idence that the Bible is of God. Because it is of 
God, therefore does it rise so high above the 
earthly level as that its shining summit is shrouded 
in the clouds, and too glorious for our eyes to 
behold! 



i 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 

"Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my 
path "—Psalm cxix:io5. 

Do the moral teachings of the Bible accord 
with its claims? This is the most searching ques- 
tion of all. Even prophecy and miracle would 
fail to satisfy us that the Bible is of God without 
correspondence between the moral truths there 
revealed and those faculties of our being to which 
such truths are addressed. 

The scientist boldly infers that light was meant 
for the eye, and the eye for the light, because 
light is pleasant to the healthy eye, and painful 
only to the diseased. On scientific principles, we 
as boldly say that the Bible was meant as a light 
to the moral nature of men; and here is the broad 
basis of our induction. The men most free from 
moral corruption — men, like Plato, of pure mind 
and clear moral judgment — when brought in con- 
tact w^ith the moral teachings of this book, most 
delight in them; and only so far as men grow 
corrupt morally, and the eye of the soul becomes 
diseased by vice and crime, do they turn from the 
pure Word of God. 

It is commonly a mark of moral profligacy 
that men antagonize the Bible; and generally the 
degree of moral degradation is shown by the vio- 
lence of such opposition. There is a man who has 



164 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

for years been conspicuous as the enemy and tra- 
ducer of the Christian faith; yet his Hfe was said to 
be exceptionally faultless in its morality, and his 
character singularly without blemish. This seemed 
strange, for his opposition to the religion of the 
Bible is peculiarly reckless and malicious. But 
further investigation disclosed the fact that his 
conversation, when unrestrained by the conven- 
tionalities of society, is impure and contaminat- 
ing. I heard a gentleman of the highest probity 
say that, w^hen by a severe snow-storm he was 
shut up with that man in a hotel, hemmed in by 
snow-drifts, so shocking was his foulness of speech 
that he preferred the cold and snow without, 
rather than expose his helpless ears to such defile- 
ment. It is the old story of hating the light, com- 
ing not to the light, lest one's deeds be re- 
proved. 

Let us give to this moral test its fullest weight. 
Some would have us receive the truth simply on 
the ground of its authority, whether it fits our 
inborn ideas of right and equity and humanity or 
not. There are a few who tell us that we are not 
to presume to judge as to right and wrong; that 
God's will makes right and wrong, and that what 
would be vice if done by our choice alone, be- 
comes virtue if done at His word. 

Are there, then, no eternal laws of right and 
wrong which lie, back of God's w^ill, in the very 
nature of things? Was Kant, the philosopher, 
wrong when he said that "the two things that filled 
him with awe are the star-sown deeps of space and 
the deeper gulf between right and wrong?" Why 
did God give us faculties capable of judging wTong 
and right if He meant that we should dare no judg- 



MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 165 

ment? It is one of the awful things, that as God 
made man capable of sitting at the telescope, and, 
in the invisible scales of science, weighing the 
stars, so He has made man's moral nature capable 
of weighing even Him in its balances. As the 
child recognizes his father by a certain likeness — 
a look, expression, attitude, gait, tone of voice, 
grasp of hand, nay, even in darkness by something 
not to be described — so are we to recognize God 
because He corresponds to our inner sense of what 
God must be; because He fits with divine exact- 
ness into the strange void of our spiritual being 
as nothing else can. 

We cannot conceive of any array of miracles 
that would force upon mankind a behef contrary 
to the teachings of reason or the promptings of 
conscience. Bishop Clark affirmed that if "it were 
written with letters of fire on the midnight sky: 
'God is unjust, God is cruel,' there is that within 
us which would say, this is an illusion of the senses 
or the work of some malignant power hostile to 
God. He cannot be unjust." 

If the Bible be the Word of God, we may be 
assured that it will contain nothing essentially op- 
posed to our moral sense; for that moral sense is 
given us to perceive truth and recognize light. 
This is the argument from correlation, or mutual 
adaptation — an argument worthy to fill vol- 
umes. 

Nature is full of wants with corresponding sup- 
plies; of appetites or cravings with their gratifi- 
cations and satisfactions. The wing of the bird 
tells of the air on which it may float; the fin of 
the fish, of the water through which it may glide; 
the ball of the joint, of the socket; the eye is a 



166 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

prophecy of the Hght, and the ear of sound. So 
universal is this correspondence that wherever we 
find a craving, an adaptation, or a lack, we look 
with unerring certainty for something else filling 
the craving, meeting the adaptation, supplying 
the lack. Emerson closed a protracted argument 
with a literary sceptic in these forcible words: 
** Sir, I hold that God, who keeps his word with the 
birds and fishes in all their migratory instinct, 
will keep His word with man." And Bryant, in 
his "Lines to a Waterfowl," with great beauty, 
points out the lesson taught by this wonderful cor- 
respondence and correlation, in these lines: 

"He who, from zone to zone. 

Guides, through the boundless sky, thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
Will lead my steps aright !" 

If man craves and needs an infinite Being, in 
whose strength, wisdom, power and love, human 
weakness, ignorance, feebleness and affection may 
find perfect refuge and rest, it will be the only 
exception to universal facts if no object exists to 
meet this conscious need. The Bible declares and 
exhibits just such an object, exactly adapted to 
fill and fulfil all this need. 

It is our solemn duty to apply to the Word of 
God these moral and spiritual tests, in order, first, 
to ascertain whether indeed it be the Word of 
God, by its essential correspondence with our own 
moral instincts and needs; and, secondly, to ap- 
preciate more fully its real worth and beauty. 
Chamfort, the Parisian wit, says: **I heard, one 
day, a devotee speaking against people who dis- 
cuss articles of faith, say naivement, 'Gentlemen, 
a true Christian never examines what he is ordered 



MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 167 

to believe. It is with that as with a bitter pill: if 
you chew it you will never be able to swallow it.' " 
Behind the witticism is a covert sneer; the light 
word is a sharp sword, meant to thrust at all gen- 
uine religious faith. But it is not so; the Bible 
asks no such absurd, blind faith, no such unrea- 
soning, unthinking, mechanical acceptance! 

In the uncovered mounds of Nineveh, you see 
only fragments of that departed glory — broken 
slabs, shattered pillars, grandeur and magnificence 
and splendor lying in ruin. How do you recog- 
nize Nineveh? You have from history and art 
formed an idea of Nineveh as it was when the 
crown of empire was upon its brow, and you com- 
pare the conception with these remains. They cor- 
respond; and you have no more doubt that the 
ancient city is uncovered than though you saw it 
now in all the pride of its supremacy. Somewhat 
thus, does God mean that we shall test his Word. 
Among its first declarations is this: "God made 
man in his own image. '* It is very plain that the 
image is shattered and man is a ruin. Yet if we 
compare the Bible idea of true manhood with the 
ruined fragments of the original man, we shall 
see a correspondence. And the more closely we 
compare the Word of God with human nature 
and needs, the more plainly will appear a simi- 
larity between the utterances of that Word and 
the highest utterances of the soul of man. This 
has been observed and confessed even by pro- 
fessed infidels, and it is a fact which no human 
philosophy has yet explained, and which, on the 
basis of sceptical philosophy, defies satisfactory 
explanation. 

Happily, the foes of Christianity furnish us a 



168 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

starting-point in their own concessions and con- 
fessions. So few are the exceptions that it is fair 
to call it a universal verdict that no book ever 
known among men compares with this. The 
praises of the Bible, drawn from the lips of infidels, 
and left on record by their pens, might be mis- 
taken for the adoring words of saints, or even an- 
gels. Yet the Word of God does not court the 
favorable opinion of men. With divine indiffer- 
ence, it hews its way into the very heart of man. 
It begins by telling him that his wisdom is folly, 
his righteousness filthy rags; it assaults him from 
every side with the most humiliating exposures; 
and yet it challenges his admiration. Reville, the 
advocate of French Rationalism, says: *'One day 
a question was raised in an assembly what book 
a man condemned to life imprisonment would best 
take with him, and from Roman Catholic, Protest- 
ant, philosophers and materialists, came alike the 
one reply, to which all agreed — the Bible!'* 

As H. L. Hastings quaintly intimates, this Bi- 
ble is a *'book which has been refuted, demol- 
ished, overthrown and exploded more times than 
any other book you ever heard of. Every little 
while somebody starts up and upsets this book; 
and it is like upsetting a solid cube of granite. 
It is just as big one way as the other; and when 
you have upset it, it is right side up, and when 
you overturn it again, it is right side up still.*' 

I. One element which enters into the ethical 
perfection of the Bible is its impartiality. All 
human biography is more or less one-sided. JBos- 
well's Life of Johnson has been pronounced the 
model biography, yet it is, more than anything 
else, along-drawn-out and highly-flavored encom- 



MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 169 

ium — a worshipper, bowing before his idol, and 
obscuring his idol's features by the clouds of in- 
cense with which he invests him. Boswell breaks 
on Johnson's feet the alabaster box of ointment; 
and the book is filled with the odor of his spike- 
nard. Human biography belongs largely to the 
heroic, and sometimes approaches the fabulous; 
and it is not unnatural. When men are prompted 
to prepare such books, it is commonly from pro- 
found admiration for the character they are to 
portray. They approach their work as an artist 
begins a portrait or a bust, with an ideal image 
before him — and in the artistic the natural is often 
lost; there is a likeness, but it is a transfigured 
likeness — a portrait untrue to life! Cromwell said 
to the younger Lely, who was about to paint his 
portrait, *' Paint me as I am; if you leave out a 
scar, a wrinkle, a freckle or a pimple, I'll not pay 
you one shilling!" But if all human biographies 
were paid for upon this basis, their authors would 
not get rich; all of them more or less discredit 
the truth by a suppression of vices and faults. 

In Bible biography mark'the rigid ethical im- 
partiality — rigid indeed, but never frigid! You 
do not feel that there is any effort or willingness 
to represent the subject of the biographical sketch 
either with a bias of prepossession or of prejudice, 
but to be exactly true to nature and fact. But no 
man is held up as perfect, except the one perfect 
man. Caleb and Joshua, Nehemiah and Daniel, 
are not presented on the faulty side of their char- 
acters; yet they are not put before us as faultless, 
crowned with a diadem almost divine. And, on 
the other hand, Noah, who was "perfect in his 
generations and walked with God," is still exhib- 



170 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

ited in his drunken sleep, and, though his sons 
went backward and cast a cloak over him to hide 
his nakedness, the impartial historian does not 
even cloak his sin by silence, far less, apology. 
We find Moses indulging in unrighteous anger 
and unholy pride, and there is no concealment lest 
we should think less of the glory of his face who 
talked with God as a man with his friend. David 
was ''after God's own heart'' — the great king, the 
saintly psalmist. How the pen of the uninspired bi- 
ographer even now falters when tracing that part of 
his history which records two of the highest crimes ! 
And yet how unhesitatingly the pencil of the Holy 
Ghost adds to the beautiful portrait the ugly and 
repulsive feature that belongs there, for the truth's 
sake ! 

The Gallery of Battles at Versailles immortal- 
izes no defeats. You walk through those vast 
corridors, and you understand the inscription over 
the portal: ''A toutes les gloires de la France.'" 
The galleries of paintings are so extensive that if 
these pictures were placed in a row they would 
cover seven miles. The subjects of the historical 
paintings range from the Crusades to the last Ital- 
ian war, including incidents in the career of Na- 
poleon I, by David; more recent Algerian battle 
scenes, by Horace Vernet, and Yvon's Crimean 
and Italian scenes. But it is noticeable that not 
one defeat is pictured forth. 

Turn now to the Word of God; let us enter 
God's historical gallery. Here the ages are in- 
cluded from Adam to Abraham, Moses to Malachi, 
and from John Baptist to John the Apostle. Peter was 
to the New Testament church what Abraham or 
Moses was to the Old, and yet he, whose noble 



MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 171 

confession was the rock on which our Lord built 
HischurchjWas also pronounced a Satan, an offense 
unto Christ, because he savored not of the things 
that were of God, but those that be of men. If 
the Bible would have spared any one, surely it 
would be the disciple whom Jesus loved, and 
whose head lay in his own bosom; and yet there 
is not even a golden gauze to veil his impatience 
and intolerance, his jealousy, ambition, vindici- 
tiveness! These men are not ideal men, but real 
men — men of like passions as ourselves, even the 
foremost of apostles, like Paul, or of prophets, 
like Elijah! There is no Greek idealism here. 

II. This Book has never been found in a sin- 
gle particular to teach immorality; and the most 
exalted positive morality and spirituality are taught 
here. Where can be found such exhibitions of 
the deformity and enormity of sin? Where such 
lofty laws of thought, feeling, purpose, endeavor? 

Some try to rob God's word of its moral value 
by subtle hints that it is not original. We are 
told that the law of Forgiveness is no new thing, 
that the Hindu proverb long since enjoined it 
even toward enemies, and beautifully compared 
the forgiving spirit to the sandal wood that im- 
parts its fragrance even to the axe which cuts it to 
the heart. We are told that the Golden Rule is 
as old as the Chinese sages, and that Confucius 
530 B. C. wrote it in a negative form; "Do not 
unto others what you would not have them do 
unto you." But suppose all this to be true — and 
overlook the fact that the negative form of this 
precept is at best but a silver, not a golden rule — 
does it prove anything against Christianity that 
some of its grand precepts have been anticipated 



172 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

by Plato or Pythagoras, by Hindu or Chinese 
sages? The moral system of the Bible is to be 
tested as a system. You may find tropical plants 
in a hot house — but to find them in their native 
soil you must go to the tropics! — there they are 
parts of the vegetable system, not exotic, but in 
digenous — they belong to the flora of the country. 
And the question is not whether certain of the ten 
commandments can be found in pagan codes, or 
some precepts of the sermon on the mount, in the 
sacred book of Buddha; but where do we find the 
higher laws of life and love, amid surroundings en- 
tirely consistent and correspondent? Here is the 
native soil, in which celestial plants naturally 
grow and thrive and bloom! It is this divine sys- 
tem of morality which makes the Bible stand 
apart and alone, alike without superior or rival. 
Daniel Webster said, "there is always room at the 
top." Thus far, the Bible stands confessedly at 
the top: still there is room for any better system 
of morality; and even if the Bible is like the top- 
stone of the pyramid that leaves no place for anv 
above it, the common verdict of mankind will 
heave it from its place if a better can be found. 
"The progress of human reason in the paths of 
ethical discovery is merely the progress of a man 
in a treadmill, doomed forever to retrace his own 
steps," and we feel no fear that any human sys- 
tem will ever be able to improve in one particular 
upon this sublime ethical teaching! 

There is a tradition of the descendants of Seth 
living on the summit'of so lofty a mountain as to 
be able to hear and join in the song of the heav- 
enly host. The Bible is that mountain: its peak 
pierces beyond the clouds into the sublimest ele- 



MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 173 

vations and atmospheres. Where the Word of 
God enc's, Heaven begins. The conceptions of 
things human and divine, found here, surpass in 
grandeur and magnificence all the dreams of the 
ages and of the sages. 

III. Where did the mere mind of man learn 
such moral conceptions of God? In a previous 
chapter the Bible account of Creation was con- 
trasted with the absurdities of the best pagan cos- 
mogonies. Take the Greek conception of God, 
at the summit of ancient culture, and compare it 
with the idea of the divine nature here unfolded! 
Jupiter, father of gods and men, the Omnipotent, 
the Thunderer, was the Son of Saturn, who had 
dethroned his father, and devoured his own chil- 
dren at birth. His wife, however, succeeded in 
saving Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto — and they be- 
came gods respectively of earth, sea and hell. 
Jupiter held court at Olympus, and the court of 
the most licentious of French sovereigns was not 
more infamous. Lust, rage, jealousy, hate, in- 
trigue, combined with power, wisdom, majesty 
and love in impossible mixtures. As Geiger well 
says, ''Gods were a turbulent aristocracy — one 
mightier than the rest but not almighty." Juno, 
Jupiter's wife, put him to sleep during a battle of 
the Greeks before Troy, So angry was he with 
her for raising a storm to impede Hercules that he 
hung her from the vaults of heaven by a chain, 
tying anvils to her feet, and when her son Vulcan 
interposed he flung him down head first: he landed 
on Semnos but broke his leg in the fall and has 
limped ever since. Jupiter had a severe head- 
ache, and Vulcan was summoned to relieve his 
distress, and at a blow from his hammer, out 



174 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

sprang Minerva, full-armed. These are a few 
specimens of Greek mythology. 

Think for one moment of the Bible conception 
of God — all powerful, but good; all-know^ing, yet 
merciful; all-present, yet not the God of Panthe- 
ism, inseparable from his works; but a personal 
God. Think of His infinite holiness, of purer 
eyes than to behold evil, yet graciously planning 
for the salvation of sinners; exalted to the highest 
heaven and yet condescending to the weakest and 
the humblest. Where did the writers of the Bi- 
ble get such conceptions of the one God, while 
the foremost nations were worshipping dumb idols ! 
while Egypt bowed to the crocodile, and Athens 
gave 60,000 women to the licentious rites of Ve- 
nus, and Rome was adoring the bloody God of 
War, and the riotous God of Wine! while even 
the Parsee got no higher than to turn his face 
eastward and adore the sun! 

IV. The Bible is alone in the full, clear exhi- 
bition of the majesty and dignity of man; putting 
an infinite distance between the lowest of men 
and highest of animals. Look at the inversions 
of truth in history! See Egypt in her palmy days 
worshipping, as divine, the calf and the crocodile; 
man bowing before the animal; then read Genesis, 
and see how grand a difference and distance are 
there put between the loftiest level of animal life 
and the lowest level of human being.*' The 
highest order of animal is only creeping thing, 
but man is made in the image, after the likeness 
of God, out of the dust of the earth, but with an 
inbreathed soul and spirit the direct inspiration 
of God's breath. 

*Gen. i : 26, 27, 28. 



MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 175 

Mark — when man is to be created — the crown 
of all creation — there is a council among the sub- 
lime persons of the Godhead: ''Let us make 
man. " He was to be in God's own image — intel- 
lectually independent, with powers of reason and 
reflection and intelligent communication. Hobbes 
finely says that man differs from all other animals, 
''rationale et orationale, " by the gift of reason and 
speech. Man alone was made in God's likeness 
— in intellectual capacity. Let modern science 
exalt the animal creation as it will, and try to 
evolve man from the monkey: but here is a great 
gap which no evolution can bridge. The capacity 
for development in the animal reaches a limit be- 
yond which it cannot be carried. Man's capacity 
for growth no science has ever yet bounded or 
measured. The monkey is after six thousand 
years essentially the same. Improvement by the 
most painstaking process is only like the swinging 
of a pendulum within a very narrow limit — it 
never goes beyond the extremity of the arc. Is 
man what he was even a thousand years ago? 

Look at the new-born infant — no animal is at 
birth so helpless as he; not even an instinct of 
self-preservation except that which enables the 
infant to attach itself to the mother's breast. No 
knowledge of the use of eyes or ears, hands or 
feet. The new-born pup is ahead of the new- 
born babe in intelligence, sagacity and power of 
self-preservation. But how soon the child will be 
training the dog, asserting his superiority! 

There was a boy at Dr. Richards' private asy- 
lum in New York, who seemed utterly animal, irra- 
tional and without the self-helpful instincts of a nor- 
mal animal. He would lie on the floor, his tongue 



176 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

lolling from his mouth, absolutely without appar- 
ent thought and almost without sensation. He 
was called the *' oyster-boy!" For months they 
tried to awaken a single sign of conscious life, or 
impress upon him one idea. One day Mrs. Rich- 
ards dropped her thimble on the floor, and it fell 
with a metallic ring that started or startled the 
boy's idiotic mind into feeble action — and he 
turned slowly, as Bottom would say, '*to see a 
noise which he heard,'* and then back his intellect 
retreated into the idiotic darkness, as a snail with- 
draws into its shell! But like the faint streak of 
grey in the east, that simple sign meant the awak- 
ening of consciousness! It was the first tint that 
tells of the dawn of day. And, on the morrow, 
again the thimble was dropped, and again the 
oyster-boy moved, and looked, this time a little 
more quickly and intently — and so, little by little, 
the darkness gave place to the dawning light, till 
the tongue no longer hung from the mouth, but 
began to learn the mystery of speech. 

By-and-by a shoemaker was brought and made 
a shoe before his eyes, fitting it to his foot, and 
then Dr. Richards, laying his hand on the shoe 
and then on the workman would say, "Shoemaker 
makes shoe." And so a tailor and a coat. Dr. 
Richards then desired to arouse at once the men- 
tal and moral faculties by introducing to this 
awakening intelligence some conception of God. 
But how should he select an object great and 
grand enough to convey such a conception! It 
was a summer morning — and the glorious sun was 
just pouring his flood of light into the bay win- 
dow. Dr. Richards took the boy to the casement, 
reverently pointed to the sun and said with holy 



MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 177 

awe: *' God made the sun!" and the boy, catching 
the tone and the thought together, repeated "God 
made the sun!'\ And Dr. Richards left him gaz- 
ing. He returned two hours later, and that oys- 
ter-boy still stood reverently gazing and saying, 
as though his whole soul were overwhelmed, 
"God made the sun!" Bishop Potter afterwards 
heard that boy, Sylvanus Wheeler, repeat the 
Lord's Prayer, and with a voice choking with 
emotion he said, "For thirty years I have repeated 
that prayer, but never like that!" 

Is man indeed only an educated monkey? 
When the noblest specimen of all the animal crea- 
tion is found capable of even such development 
as that, it will be time enough to doubt that 
man is more than the animal. No, between that 
oyster-boy helpless on the floor and the highest 
style of animal life, there is the fathomless gap of 
the infinite! How does the gap widen when we 
remember to what . illimitable extent the edu- 
cation and development of that mind and heart 
may yet be carried! Try and follow that intel- 
lect and heart, so slow to wake into a true life — 
as year after year, and, beyond this narrow sphere, 
age after age, and cycle upon cycle revolve — the 
oyster-boy has left all the scholarship and learn- 
ing of the centuries behind, as the soaring lark 
leaves the twig of the shrub to greet the sun high 
up where clouds rest, or as the sun in noonday 
leaves the dim glory of the dawn. He has gone 
far beyond Aristotle and Plato, and Bacon; the 
learning of philosophers he despises as the full- 
grown man puts away the prattle of childish ig- 
norance. He has attained unto the knowledge 
of the cherub and the affection of the seraph. If 



178 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

man has his descent from the oyster, how comes 
this ascent above the oyster! 

The image of God in man is the moral like- 
ness also — the power of judgment, discriminating 
between right and wrong. Man has a conscience, 
and if we measure fully the grandeur of its au- 
thority and the majesty of its decisions, we shall 
be constrained to say with Dorner, that "con- 
science has the man. " 

And so has the man the image of God's immor- 
tality. He is fashioned not like the beasts that 
perish, after the law of a carnal commandment, 
but after the power of an endless life. What 
wonder that God is said to have breathed into 
man's nostrils the breath of lives, so that man be- 
came a living soul — mark, becamey not had a liv- 
ing soul. It is the soul that is the man, and 
therefore God made man to have dominion over 
fish and fowl and cattle — the whole creation. 

It is because of the exalted moral and spirit- 
ual character of the Bible that it has successfully 
resisted the assaults of four thousand years! It 
is too strong in itself and in its hold on the hearts 
of men, to be overthrown; as well attempt with 
popguns and putty to demolish Gibraltar — or to 
root up by hand one of the cedars of Lebanon. 
The Bible is too high to be successfully assaulted; 
as well try to throw water against the firmament 
— or to dislodge the stars with arrows; or, as Dr. 
Breckinridge said, "as well attempt to plant your 
shoulder against the burning wheel of the mid- 
day sun, and roll it back into night!" 

The second Psalm represents God as seated on 
his exalted throne, and derisively laughing at the 
impotence of human rage against Him and His 



MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 17 9 

rule. So may we say of the Word of God — it 
laughs at the malice of its foes, at the impotence 
of its most gigantic adversaries, for, like the 
throne of God, it rests on eternal foundations. 

Some reader perhaps smiles at such enthusi- 
asm, and thinks within himself that it is very 
strange if the Bible is such a wonderful Book, 
that the sceptical objector does not find it out. A 
man may look into the Bible with an eye open 
only to objectionable features. The unconverted 
man loves objections, as the condemned man at 
court is glad to detect a flaw in the argument 
which is directed against him, though the flaw 
may not at all afiect his guilt or the real conclu- 
siveness of the testimony. A mind disposed to 
scepticism opens the Word, if at all, not to find 
moral beauty, but to hunt for something on which 
to hang a new objection; and hence, most infi- 
dels never read the Bible, but take their objec- 
tions at second hand. Let two examples be 
given. 

''And he brought forth the people that were 
therein, and put them under saws, and under har- 
rows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made 
them pass through the brick-kiln: and thus did 
he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. 
So David and all the people returned unto Jeru- 
salem"* This has been violently assailed as a 
proof of the cruelty of David — the man after 
God's own heart, who nevertheless took the peo- 
ple of Rabbah and sawed them in twain, or drew 
over them iron harrows, or clove them with axes, 
or roasted them in brick-kilns. But what if it 
refers only to the work at which he set them?\ 

*2 Samuel, xii: 31. | Angus' Bible Hand Book. 



180 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

An infidel paper in Boston devoted a column 
of ridicule to the "quail story,"* estimating the 
bushels of quails piled up over the country, and 
showing that each of the 6,000,000 Israelites 
would have 2,888,643 bushels of the quails per 
month, or 69,629 bushels for a meal. But the 
Bible says no such thing as that they were piled 
two cubits high over a territory forty miles broad; 
it simply means that the wind that brought them 
from the sea, swept them within reach, or about 
three feet above the ground, not out of reach as 
they would have been over head. If you should 
say you saw a flock of birds as high as a church 
spire, even an infidel would ridicule any one for 
supposing they ^^xq packed so high. 

V. There is one fact, worth more than all ob- 
jections, and overbalancing them all. The Bible 
somehow works moral revolutions in character. 
Find any other book that has wrought such won- 
ders. Men have studied natural philosophy, as- 
tronomy, botany, geology, read novels and 
histories and poems, works on law and medicine 
and philosophy; who has found these books re- 
straining lust, curbing sensual appetites, inspiring 
noble aims, exposing sinful propensities, moving 
one to be a truer son, better husband, kinder 
father? But, somehow, from the day men begin 
systematically to read the Bible, they begin to be 
sensible of a new power at work in mind and 
heart, working most of all for righteousness. I 
would put higher value on one chapter of God's 
Book than on all other books put together, to re- 
strain from evil, and constrain to good; and for 
more than twenty-five years I have been watch- 

*Numb., xi: 31. 



MORAL SUBLIMITY OF GOD'S WORD. 181 

ing this book as it has touched other men and 
women in the quick of their being, with the thrill 
of a divine life. I have seen men of no secular 
culture grow grand under the educating influence 
of this book — their minds expanding under the 
influence of its elevating, ennobling, inspiring 
ideas of God and man, of duty and destiny; I 
have seen them grow to beauty of character and 
conduct, sweetness of temper and disposition, 
transformed, transfigured. 

These results demand a cause efficient and suf- 
ficient to produce such eff'ects; and that adequate 
cause can be found only in the fact that God is 
in the Bible by the breath of His inspiring, trans- 
forming Spirit. 

''This little volume,'' said the venerable 
Schliermacher, holding up a Greek New Testa- 
ment before two English students, "contains more 
valuable information for mankind than all the 
other writings of antiquity put together. " This 
book is really the foundation of all the literature 
that is worth preserving. Not less than two hun- 
dred thousand volumes have been written to ex- 
pound and illustrate the Book of books. It is 
thus the central sun of a constellation of glories; 
and more and more as the ages pass, do the no- 
blest of human thoughts, both borrow their 
lustre from its glory, and wheel into reverent or- 
bits about this as a center? 

Let the infidel assault it — let men blaspheme 
and ridicule. It is God's lever and it is moving 
the world. Science turns its microscopic eye 
upon it, but it cannot be convicted of essential 
error. The moral philosopher examines its ethi- 
cal code; but the inspiration of all virtue is there. 



l82 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

The hungry soul that craves food for a starving 
heart, finds here the full feast of fat things satis- 
fying every craving. Who will turn from this 
divine book, to gratify his evil heart by a fatal 
plunge into the darkness of unbelief! 



PART II. 



THE DIVINE PERSON. 



CHAPTER IX. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

"In the Volume of the Book, it is written of me." — PsALM 
XL, 7. 

The argument from prophecy we have put 
foremost, because God Himself does. This is 
the very seal and signature by which the Holy 
Scriptures are certified by Him, as of divine ori- 
gin and authority. The author of this Book of 
Books attached to the volume clear credentials, 
open to examination, easy of investigation, con- 
clusive in attestation. Other signs of supernat- 
ural origin and character there are, which can be 
appreciated only by prolonged and diligent study, 
disciplined intellect, varied acquirements; but 
here is a sign, a seal, a sanction, which lies upon 
the very face and surface of the document, appeals 
to the common mind, carries its own verification 
within the lines and limits of the Word itself. 
The most ordinary reader may examine the curi- 
ous predictions of the Messiah's person and work 
found in the Old Testament; follow the gradual 
progress of these revelations from Genesis to 
Malachi, and trace the prophecies as they descend 
into details, more and more specific and minute, 
until at last the full figure of the coming One 
stands out, as the figure of the Corsican corporal 
stood out upon the Column Vendome; nay, if he 
will not only read but search the Old Testament 



186 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Scriptures, he may trace the Messiah from his 
birth in Bethlehem all along through his career of 
suffering and of conquest, as he might follow the 
career of Napoleon in those memorial reliefs along 
the spiral bronze that wraps that column. Then 
with this image clearly fixed in his mind's eye, 
he may turn from the Old Testament to the New; 
and beginning with Matthew, see how the historic 
personage, depicted by the Evangelists, corres- 
ponds and coincides in every particular with the 
prophetic personage, portrayed by the prophets; 
let him, after this new image has reached its full 
outline also, take the New Testament profile of 
the Christ and lay it over the Old Testament pro- 
file of the servant of God; let him note how fea- 
ture coincides with feature, even to the most mi- 
nute particular; how in every respect the history 
fills and fulfills the prophecy. There is not a dif- 
ference or divergence, yet there could have been 
no collusion or contact between prophet and nar- 
rator, for they are separated by from four hundred 
to fourteen hundred years. Observe, the reader 
has not gone outside of the volume itself: he has 
simply compared two portraits; one in the Old 
Testament, of a mysterious coming one; another 
in the New, of one who has actually come; and 
his irresistible conclusion is that these two per- 
fectly blend in absolute unity, Nt) reasoning is 
required: instinctively, intuitively, he leaps to the 
conclusion, by the quick logic of common sense, 
that one hand drew the image in the prophecies 
and moulded the portrait in the histories, and that 
hand must have been divine! 

Mark also that this conclusion is a double one: 
it compels the candid reader to accept the pro- 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 187 

phetic Scriptures as infallibly inspired, and to 
accept the historic Christ, toward whom these 
glorious fingers of prophecy point and in whom 
all these rays of light converge, as a divine per- 
son. 

The apostles and Christ Himself laid great 
stress upon this argument from prophecy: it was 
not only the main, but almost the sole argument 
employed, in the discourses outlined in the New 
Testament. There was then no need to prove 
the facts of our Lord's life, death and resurrec- 
tion: these things were **not done in a corner," 
as Paul boldly said to Agrippa. The history 
needed vindication and verification, no more than 
day dawn needs announcement. Even the foes 
of our faith dared not dispute the facts, set forth 
by the evangelists. An overwise and overnice 
'higher criticism' may at the distance of eighteen 
centuries challenge us to prove to a mathematical 
certainty that Jesus rose from the dead, but it is 
noticeable that, during the first three centuries of 
hot contest, when every step of advance on the 
part of Christianity was marked with blood, it 
was not necessary for apologists to defend the 
fact of the resurrection which even the enemies 
of the cross had not the boldness to dispute. 

As in those days the facts were plain, it was 
only necessary to show their marvellous corres- 
pondence with the Old Testament prophecy, in 
order to carry prompt conviction to every fair 
mind; and so this was the common method of 
preaching the gospel, the solid but simple rock- 
base of argument upon which rested all appeal. 

Our risen Lord Himself, walking toward Em- 
maus with two disciples, "beginning at Moses and 



188 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

all the prophets, expounded unto them in all the 
Scriptures the things concerning Himself. " They 
had been despairing at his death, and incredulous 
at his resurrection; yet he showed them that both 
his dying and his rising on the third day were 
anticipated for centuries in the prophecies, and so 
he rebuked at once their despondency and their 
unbelief, by exclaiming, '*0 fools and slow of 
heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken ! 
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things 
and to enter into His glory?" that is, was it not 
necessary that all this should be, in order that the 
Scripture should find its glorious fulfillment! 

On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached a 
sermon which overwhelmed three thousand hear- 
ers with immediate conviction. The entire basis 
of his argument was simply this: that in the 
death and resurrection of Jesus — nay, in their 
very crucifixion of Him, the prophecies, read 
every Sabbath day in their synagogues, were ex- 
actly fulfilled! He showed them how David, 
foreseeing that Christ should rise, had uttered the 
mysterious words of the sixteenth Psalm; how 
that Joel, foreseeing the outpouring of the Spirit, 
had long ago written of the very Pentecostal 
blessing they were then witnessing. And it was 
by this appeal, in which prophecy and history 
met in one burning piercing point of conver- 
gence, that those thousands were pricked in their 
heart. 

We trace Peter's discourse in Solomon's porch, 
and in the palace of Cornelius; Stephen's address 
before his stoners; Paul's speeches and sermons, 
in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia, and in 
Thessalonica where *' three Sabbath days he rea- 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 189 

soned out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging 
that Christ must needs have suffered and risen 
again from the dead," and that this Jesus whom 
he preached was the anointed one — we follow this 
same Paul till he comes before Agrippa; his ap- 
peal still is, **Believest thou the prophets?" And 
when we get our last glimpse of him at Rome, he 
is still ''expounding and testifying concerning the 
kingdom of God, persuading concerning Jesus, 
both out of the law of Moses and out of the proph- 
ets, from morning till evening." And so it was 
with ApoUos, the golden mouth of Alexandria. 
Accomplished as he was in all the oriental learn- 
ing, he chose this one all-convincing theme, and 
"mightily convinced the Jews, publicly shewing 
by the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ." 

Why was this argument from prophecy then 
so common, so mighty, — now, alas! so seldom 
used with real force and power — why was this 
great argument chosen, out of all the armory of 
weapons, to defend an assaulted faith and com- 
pel the very assailants to surrender? Because 
this d^rgument is ti7ia7iswe7^al?/e; because it is per- 
petual in its force, and because it is applicable 
always and everywhere. And that we may all 
feel its mighty suasion, let us patiently enter some- 
what into particulars. 

The prophecies and references to Christ in 
the Old Testament, which are expressly cited 
in the New, either as predictions fulfilled in 
Him or as previsions applied to Him, num- 
ber three hundred and thirty-three. There are 
passages of scripture, some of which contain 
in themselves a little group of predictions, includ- 
ing several particulars, so that they stand out in 



190 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

the firmament of prophecy, not like single stars, 
however bright, but like constellations in which 
are clusters of radiant suns. 

These prophecies may be divided into two great 
classes: first, those which portray Christ in His 
human nature, His Hneage, career, sufferings and 
glory; in His successive manifestations until the 
end of the world; secondly, those which de- 
scribe His character and offices, human and di- 
vine. Each class may be divided again into some 
twenty subdivisions, covering with astonishing 
fullness and exactness the most minute particu- 
lars; the audacious pen of prophecy, with the 
calmness and boldness of conscious inspiration 
and infallibility, adds feature after feature and 
touch after touch and tint after tint, until what 
was at first **a drawing without color," a mere 
outline or profile, comes at last to be a perfect 
portrait with the very hues of the living flesh. 
This mysterious coming One is to be the seed of 
the woman, born of a virgin; He is to be of the 
family of Noah, and branch of Shem; of the race 
of the Hebrews; of the seed of Abraham in the 
line of Isaac, through Jacob or Israel; of the 
tribe of Judah, the house of David. He is to be 
born at Bethlehem, after a period of seventy 
weeks* from the issue of the decree to restore and 
rebuild Jerusalem; His passion or sufferings, His 
death on the cross. His embalmment and entomb- 
ment. His resurrection on the third day. His as- 
cension into the heavenly glory. His second ap- 
pearance in glory at the "regeneration,'' and His 
last appearance at the end of the world, are all 

*Properly heptades^ or divisions of seven. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. • 191 

included in the delineation of His humanity and 
human career as the Son of Man. 

The second grand division of these Messianic 
prophecies includes His double character as the 
Son of God while yet the Son of Man; as the 
Holy One or Saint; as the Saint of Saints, the 
righteous or just One, the Wisdom of God, the 
Oracle or Word of the Lord God, the Saviour or 
Redeemer, the Lamb of God, God's servant, the 
Mediator, Intercessor, Advocate or Daysman, 
Shiloh or Apostle; Prophet like Moses; Priest, 
High-Priest like Aaron ; King like David ; Prophet, 
Priest, King in one, like Melchizedek; Chief Cap- 
tain or Leader like Joshua; Messiah, Christ or 
Anointed; King of Israel and God of Israel; 
Jehovah, Lord of Hosts, and, as though all titles 
were exhausted, as ''King of Kings and Lord of 
Lords." 

I. The first class of predictions which arrests 
our attention is Direct Prophecy concerning the 
august personage known as the coming Messiah. 
The gradual unfolding of this flower of Messianic 
prophecy is marked by three stages or periods of 
development. The first ends with Moses, and 
may be called the Mosaic; the second centers in 
the reigns of David and Solomon, and may be 
termed the Davidic; the third closes with Ma- 
lachi, and may be called the properly prophetic, 
and, because here prediction rises to its loft- 
iest altitude, the climacteric. These three periods 
correspond, in plant life, to seed, bud, and full- 
grown flower. 

I. The Mosaic period gives us the great germ of 
all that unfolds, afterward, into the perfect and fra- 
grant bloom in the rose of Sharon, the lily of the 



]92 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

valley. In Genesis iii: 15 we are told that the 
seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head. 
To feel the full force of this germinal prophecy, 
we must stand where our first parents stood. The 
awful fact was before them that the serpent had 
fatally stung humanity at the very heart, and 
brought death into the world, and all our woe. 
Eden was lost, God's favor forfeited, and inno- 
cence forever gone. That deliverance could come 
at all was wonderful; that it could come by the 
seed of her who led the way in the first sin was 
more wonderful still; that it should not only 
bring healing to lost man, but a crushing blow to 
the very head of the serpent-tempter, was most 
wonderful of all. Yet all this was mysteriously 
wrapped in that first enigma of Messianic predic- 
tion. There was to be a triumph of humanity 
over the evil principle represented in the serpent, 
and exhibited in the fall. 

And now this seed-prophecy puts forth its 
slender blade, and begins to branch out into par- 
ticular predictions. The general, vague promise 
narrows down; the deliverer is to come of the 
posterity of Shem; later still the promise grows 
more specific, and limits this deliverer to the de- 
scendants of Abraham, then of Isaac, then of Ja- 
cob, then of Judah, and finally of David. The 
prophecy thus branches out into more and more 
minute particulars, until the ramifications of the 
prophetic tree reach the tiniest twig; and yet, 
with each new descent or ascent into particulars, 
the prophecy becomes the more impossible of ful- 
filment if no divine purpose and power are be- 
hind it. 

The prophecies of the Mosaic period branch 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 193 

out into other particulars beside those oi pedigree. 
Not Abraham's seed alone, but all the families of 
the earth are to be blessed in this coming One. 
He is to be a Shiloh, the peaceful or pacific One, 
and unto Him, as a sceptred Ruler, the people 
are to gather. He is to be a prophet like unto 
Moses, yet clothed with higher authority and 
gifted with higher wisdom — Lawgiver, Leader, 
Ruler, Redeemer — Rex^ Lex, Liix^ Dux, 

2. The second stage of Messianic prophecy 
has been called the Davidic, Here, he who was 
to be a leader and a lawgiver Hke Moses, is to be 
a king of war like David, yet a prince of peace 
like Solomon; only his kingdom is to be without 
succession and without end, which could be true 
only of some order of royalty, higher than hu- 
man. In the Messianic Psalms, various aspects of 
the dignity, royalty and divinity of this coming 
King are set forth. He is God's anointed Son. 
His sceptre sways even the heathen: redeemed 
humanity constitutes his chosen bride and the day 
of the nuptials is the feast day of the universe. 
Psalms ii, xlv, Ixxii, etc. 

His empire is to be as wide as the world, as 
long as time, yet it is to be spiritual, conferring 
peace by righteousness. He will be the friend of 
the poorest and most obscure. Like rain on the 
mown grass. His rule shall distil blessings that 
make the barren soil fertile. Liddon sees in these 
prophecies in which his name is represented as 
enduring and propagating, a hint that He him- 
self shall be out of sight, ruling invisibly in his 
church. His people are clad not in a panoply of 
steel but an armor of beautiful holiness, serving 
wiUingly. This King is also a priest, anointed 



194 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

with the oil of celestial gladness, fairer than the 
children of men, yet himself a son of David. 

3. Messianic prophecy soars to its summit 
in the third and ^roY>Qv\y pj^ophetic period, repre- 
sented by Isaiah, whose writings furnish us the 
''richest mine of Messianic prophecy in the Old 
Testament. "* From the fortieth to the sixty-sixth 
chapters, inclusive, we have one continuous Mes- 
sianic poem, a most wonderful production even 
for an inspired pen. This sublime song is not a 
mere rambling rhapsody, without link or joints 
of connection, but a continuous symmetrical dis- 
course in poetic parallels, setting forth for future 
ages the complete character and career of this 
'servant of God.' The first five verses of the for- 
tieth chapter contain the germ of truth unfolded 
in the whole poem, viz: the pardon of iniquity, 
the revelation of divine glory, and the ultimate 
blessing to all flesh, which are to come by this 
mystic Servant of Jehovah. The discriminating 
reader may within the compass of this poem find 
Christ in his three offices, prophet, priest, king; 
will behold, crystallizing about the atonement, all 
the great truths of Redemption, and may trace 
in outline all the future course of redemptive his- 
tory. 

A singular refrain, repeated in the same 
words, ''there is no peace, saith Iny God, to the 
wicked," and at the very close of the whole poem, 
expressed in more terrible terms: "their worm 
shall not die," etc., divides the poem into three 
cantos or sections; and in the very center of the 
middle canto, to mark the very jewel which occu- 



♦Liddon, "Divinity of Christ," p. 83. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 195 

pies the innermost shrine, what do we find? that 
fif ty 'third chapter , in the compass of twelve verses, 
fourteen times declares the truth oi vicarious atone- 
ment ^ that this man of sorrows bore our griefs, 
carried our sorrows, was wounded for our trans- 
gressions, bruised for our iniquities; the chastise- 
ment laid upon Him brought our peace, and the 
wales on His back assure our healing. Observe, 
we advance just half way from \h'dX fortieth chap- 
ter to the sixty-sixth, and in the very heart of 
the Messianic mine, we find one glorious central 
chamber, blazing with rubies — it is flooded with 
light, but the light is blood-red! The Spirit is 
conducting us to the doctrine which is central 
both in prophecy and history, that Jesus died to 
save sinners. 

Around this central chapter cluster many 
other subordinate but starry glories. This Ser- 
vant of God, called from his mother's womb, upon 
whom God puts His spirit, is anointed to preach 
good tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken- 
hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive. The 
Jews have always narrowed down salvation to the 
chosen seed, but He is to be a light to the Gentiles y 
and salvation to the ends of the earth. 

Under his rule, *' the wolf also shall dwell with 
the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the 
kid, and the calf, and the young lion and the fat- 
ling together, and a little child shall lead them. " 
There is to be a transformation even of disposi- 
tion, that very stronghold of sin within us. Coarse, 
rough, savage, cruel natures are to be changed, 
to the gentle, tender, mild and generous. Wolfish 
rapacity and ferocity, leopardlike cunning and 
treachery, lionlike violence and cruelty, are to be 



196 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

subdued; and the childlike spirit is to reign in 
human hearts. 

A prolonged study alone can reveal the mi- 
nuter beauties and glories of this last and greatest 
period of Messianic prophecy. Yet with what 
boldness does the inspired pen tell us how He 
who poured out his soul unto death, bared his 
back to the scourge, was led as a lamb to the 
slaughter; and even depict him, standing before 
his judges, dumb as a sheep before the shearers. 

This is only Isaiah. But after him, in the sac- 
red canon, stretch three hundred years of proph- 
ecy, adding new and startling particulars to these 
direct predictions, until Micah elects Bethlehem 
as the one among the thousand cities and villages 
of Judea, where the coming one shall be born; 
and Daniel tells us that it shall be after seventy 
sevens from the going forth of the commandment 
to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, an enigma now 
of easy solution. The decree of Cyrus dates 457 
B. C; add the thirty-three years of Christ's min- 
istry and the total is 490 years, just seventy hep- 
tades of seven years each. 

We are not surprised when Liddon trium- 
phantly affirms that the human life of Messiah, 
His supernatural birth, His character, His death, 
His triumph, are predicted in the Old Testament 
with a minuteness which utterly defies the ration- 
alistic insinuation that the argument from proph- 
ecy in favor of Christ's claims may after all be 
resolved into an adroit manipulation of more or 
less irrelevant quotations. No amount of cap- 
tious ingenuity will destroy the substantial fact 
that the leading features of our Lord's human 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 197 

manifestation were announced to the world some 
centures before He actually came among us.* 

We have barely touched upon the outskirts of 
the theme: the vast field lies yet before us. 

II. The testimony of indirect prophecy is 
even more wonderful. We must be content with 
only a glimpse, leaving our readers to explore for 
themselves, while we indicate only which way lie 
the openings to these galleries of wonders. 

What we have termed indirect prophecy may 
include: 

1. Poetry not primarily or apparently Mes- 
sianic. 

2. Ceremony, in which are typical foreshad- 
owings of Christ. 

3. History, in which we can now see a hid- 
den allegory; or historical personages, types of 
some aspect of Messiah's character. 

4. Paradoxes, which only the facts of Mes- 
siah's history can unlock. 

5. Undesigned coincidences which are acci- 
dental, so far as man is concerned, yet providen- 
tial, forming parts of a divine harmony. 

I. Prophetic Poetry, Take, for instance, the 
Psalms. Where such a man as William Alexan- 
der, Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, has left his 
footsteps like prints of gold, we may well hesitate 
to attempt, within such narrow limits, even an 
outline of argument. In his "Witness of the 
Psalms to Christ and Christianity," the Bampton 
lectures for 1876, he has given a magnificent spec- 
imen of both expository and apologetic litera- 
ture. With the peculiar insight of a Christian 



*Liddon, p. 95. 



198 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

scholar, he first appHes six grand criteria as tests 
of single prophecies: i , Known prior promulga- 
tion; 2, Sufficiency of correspondence; 3, Re- 
moteness, chronological and moral; 4, Non-iso- 
lation; 5, Characteristic, but not over-definite 
particularity; 6, Worthiness of spiritual purpose. 

Then he divides the Psalms into the subject- 
ively, objectively and ideally Messianic, and then 
shows how our Lord's character and life are there 
delineated, and how the character of Christian 
disciples and of the Christian church is clearly 
portrayed in poems that antedate Christ's coming 
by a thousand years. 

As a specimen of the Witness of the Psalms 
to Christ, let us take Psalm XXII. There is noth- 
ing here, as in direct prophecy, to hint its de- 
signed application to the Messiah. It is, on its 
face, simply the wail of some sufferer abandoned 
to the malice of his foes. Yet set Jesus within 
it, and, like a blazing light in a cavern, he makes 
it all literally radiant with meaning. The open- 
ing crv: ''My God, my God, why hast thou for- 
saken me!" was the last of seven sentences ut- 
tered on the cross — ''that voice of utter loneliness 
in the death-struggle, which the noble-hearted 
rationalist, Schenkel, confesses to be 'that entirely 
credible utterance, because it never could have 
been invented. ' "* 

Who is this forsaken one? Observe the pe- 
culiarities of his position, circumstances, charac- 
ter, sufferings, and see what key fits this compli- 
cated lock. Five particulars arrest attention, 
which closer study might increase again five- 
fold^ 

* Alexander, 19. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 199 

1. He is abandoned, scorned, abject, and 
crying out from anguish — a reproach of men. 

2. He is surrounded by enemies, fitly typi- 
fied by bisons, strong ones of Bashan, lions, and 
dogs. 

3. His suffering somehow involves fierce 
thirst. 

4. Death is its consequence and finale. 

5. There is a piercing of hands and feet 
which suggests, if it does not compel, the cross, 
which was not a Jewish mode of punishment, and 
had no parallel in the times of David. 

A closer view multiplies the particulars of 
correspondence. This sufferer is laughed to scorn; 
passers-by shoot out the lip and shake the head, 
saying, *'He trusted in Jehovah, that He would 
deliver him; let Him deliver him, seeing He de- 
lighted in him;" and we recognize the exact an- 
ticipation of what took place at Golgotha. 

His sufferings are described in language that 
would not fit any Jewish mode of punishment. 
**I am poured out like water, and all my bones 
are out of joint! my heart is like wax; it is melted 
in the midst of my bowels. I may tell all my 
bones; they look and stare upon me. They part 
my garments among them, and cast lots upon my 
vesture. '' 

We must leap the gulf of a thousand years to 
find, at Calvary, the solution of this poetic enigma. 
The psalmist, probably unconsciously, was draw- 
ing a picture of a crucified Christ for future believ- 
ers to interpret. It is the hanging by those pierced 
hands and feet that disjoints the very bones; the 
Roman spear-thrust that lets the heart melt in 
the midst of the bowels like wax, and the blood 



200 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and water pour out from the riven side; it is the 
stripping off of the raiment that leaves the dying 
nude sufferer to count his very bones, made more 
prominent by the extension of the crucified body 
and the wasting pangs of crucifixion; and when 
they parted His garments, casting lots for the 
seamless robe, the last correspondence was unwit- 
tingly added to complete the fufilment of proph- 
ecy. 

The scholarly bishop calls attention to another 
feature of that twenty-second psalm, which oth- 
ers have overlooked. It is ?i psalm of sobs. The 
anguish of the sufferer shows itself by broken 
cries, and the gifted writer asks, ''Who can con- 
strice a sob?'' The very grammatical structure of 
the psalm hints that He who hung in mortal ag- 
ony was too exhausted to speak, save in fragment- 
ary sentences. The Hebrew is full of pathos. 
''My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me? 
Far from my salvation! .... Words of my com- 
plaint!" .... 

And yet the agony of this sufferer is not all. 
He who is thus brought into the dust of death is 
yet to declare Jehovah's name unto his brethren, 
in the midst of great congregations to praise 
Him; and, stranger still, that sorrow is somehow 
linked to the ends of the world, and a people yet 
to be born are to be blessed by that vicarious 
agony. Will any candid reader say that the cru- 
cified Saviour is not mysteriously set forth in that 
psalm? 

Christ is everywhere found in the Old Testa- 
ment. He is the golden link that binds all its 
parts together; the divine lamp that lights all its 
secret chambers; He is the key to its mystery 
and the key-note of its harmony. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 201 

The Bible may be divided into four depart- 
ments, as to the matter contained therein, viz: 
Prophetic^ Poetic, Didactic^ Historic, We have 
already found Him to be the great theme of proph- 
ecy. Beginning at Moses, to Him give all the 
prophets witness. Even the minute details of His 
life are anticipated in prophecy; but that He 
should be found elsewhere in the Word is a dou- 
ble marvel. Yet in Luke xxiv: 44, He Himself 
told His disciples, **A11 things must be fulfilled 
which are written in the law of Moses, and in the 
prophets, and in the Psalms , concerning me. " 

As these three popular divisions comprehend 
the whole Old Testament, the Master's words as- 
sure us that not only in prophecy and poetry, but 
in the law^ we shall find prophecies of Him. The 
whole Old Testament is the book of Christ and 
His salvation. 

Take the five books of Moses: Genesis tells of 
the ark saving from the flood of wrath; Exodus, 
of the passover, in which the sprinkled blood 
brought deliverance; Leviticus, of sacrifice, the 
day of atonement, the year of jubilee; Numbers, 
of the serpent lifted up for a look of faith to bring 
healing; Deuteronomy, of refuge from the avenger 
of blood. Not only are all these symbols of 
salvation and types of Christ, but there is a con- 
stant development of doctrine. These types be- 
tray an order — a progressive unfolding of the 
truth. First, there is salvation from wrath — it is 
by blood, by sacrifice of substitute; then it puts 
away both the penalty and the guilt of sin; then 
it ends in the jubilee of cancelled debt and release 
from bondcige. A step further and we learn that 
it is all conditioned on a believing look of faith, 



202 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and provides escape from pursuing justice. Sac- 
rifice ends in atonement, and atonement in ju- 
bilee. 

The indirect prophecies foreshadowing the 
person and work of Christ cover far more ground 
than direct prophecy or devout poetry. In fact, 
open where you will, you may begin at that same 
scripture and preach Jesus. 

2. The rites and ceremonies of the Levitical 
economy are comparatively meaningless until you 
set Him in the midst of them, to interpret them. 
The cross was a center of radiance, and casts its 
beams backward to the first sacrifice, and forward 
to the last supper. 

A single example of the foreshadowing of 
Christ's sacrifice in the Levitical rites may be given 
from the Day of Atonement, in Lev. xvi. Here 
the main central figures are two kids of goats, so 
nearly alike as to be practically identical, and dis- 
tinguished, as some say, by a scarlet cord or rib- 
bon tied about the neck of the scapegoat. One 
is offered for a sin-offering; the other is presented 
alive; over his head, while the high-priest's hands^ 
are laid heavily upon it, the sins of the people 
are confessed, and then he is led away far into the 
wilderness, that he may never find his way back 
to the camp. He is called '' AzazeV — i. e., re- 
moval. Even a child may see h^re a pictorial 
presentation of the twofold result of Christ's aton- 
ing work: first, the expiation of guilt; secondly, 
the re^noval of our offenses as a barrier to fellow- 
ship with God, as though even the memory of 
them were annihilated; and the two goats are, as 
near as may be, alike, because both represent dif- 
ferent aspects of one reconciling work. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 203 

A studious examination of Old Testament 
rites, in their relation to the atoning work of our 
Lord, prepares us to understand the mysterious 
words of the Apocalypse, and why it was that 
the Lamb which had been slain was the only be- 
ing in the universe found worthy to open the book, 
and to loose the seven seals thereof, * It is a trib- 
ute to the interpj'eting power of the blood of 
Christ. The Lamb slain is the only key to un- 
lock the mysteries of inspired poetry and proph- 
ecy, sacrifice and symbol. The whole book is 
seven times sealed up, till we apply to itthe blood; 
then the seals are loosed, and the mystic signs 
may be clearly read. 

3. Even the historichook^^ are indirect proph- 
ecies. First, because they prepare for and point 
toward Him. They tell of a chosen man, family, 
tribe, nation, out of whom, as the consummate 
flower of this historic elect race, comes a divine 
Leader and Lawgiver, the Founder of the Church 
of the world. The centuries are marshalled by 
an invisible Power, and take up their march 
toward the cross of Christ; there they all find both 
their rallying and radiating center. Reading his- 
tory in the light of the cradle at Bethlehem and 
the cross of Calvary, all its pages are illumined 
with new significance. 

In hundreds of instances Old Testament his- 
tory seems designedly typical. Events have a 
double meaning — one apparent and present, an- 
other hidden and future. Paul himself says of 
the record of Sarah and Hagar, "which things are 
an allegory'' — hinting that, behind the actual nar- 

* Rev. v: 5. 



204 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

rative of facts, there is a prophetic finger pointing 
to the future. Scripture biographies, like those 
of Joseph, Moses, Joshua, EHjah and Elisha, Da- 
vid and Daniel, reveal so many points of corre- 
spondence between these men and the Redeemer, 
that we cannot but regard them as typical cho^r- 
acterSy who foreshadowed Christ in the various 
aspects of his many-sided character. The three 
reigns of Saul, David and Solomon, each of forty 
years — that sacred number — unmistakably fore- 
cast the three periods of church-history — the 
Jewish, ending in apostasy; the Christian church 
militant; and the Christian church trinraphant in 
the millennial reign. 

Can any careful reader avoid seeing Christ in 
the paschal lamb? When the lamb was roasted, 
a spit was thrust lengthwise through the body, 
and another transversely from shoulder to shoul- 
der; every passover lamb was transfixed on a 
cross. When Moses lifted up the serpent, it was 
not on a pole, but on a banner-staff- — i. e., a 
cross. 

Our Lord himself teaches us to see in Jonah — 
sacrificed for the salvation of the ship's crew, and 
for three days borne down into the depths in the 
belly of the great fish, and then thrown out upon 
the land — a typical prophecy of His owm deaths 
burial and resurrection. And so fiiil does Old 
Testament history seem to be of Christ, that there 
is a risk of carrying this perception of resemblance 
and analogy to a fanciful extreme, like those who 
in the Greek word for fish, ixOv^^ find the ini- 
tials of a redemptive sentence, hjaov^ XP^^^^^ 
deov vio^ (jGorr/p, 

If Christ he patent in the New Testament, He 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 205 

is as surely latent everywhere in the Old. There 
are, as far back as Genesis, hints of at least a du- 
ality of persons in the Godhead; and as the doc- 
trine oi one God was the great ark that God's peo- 
ple bore through the ages, this cannot be a relic 
of polytheism. What means this joining of a sin- 
gular verb to a plural noun — Elohim; the consul- 
tation over man's creation, "Let us make man;'* 
the threefold blessing by the priests in Numbers; 
the threefold rhythm of prayer and praise in the 
Psalter; the adoring chant of worship to the Most 
Holy Three in One by the cherubim in Isaiah? 
May there not be occult as well as explicit refer- 
ences to the Trinity? * 

When we read of one supreme Angel of Jeho- 
vah, in whom was the Holy name of God; the 
Angel of His Presence, who saved His people; 
a personified Wisdom of God, who so mysteri- 
ously corresponds to the Logos in John — we claim 
the privilege of seeing at least a dim and cloudy 
image, sometimes taking on more distinct and 
definite features of the Christ whom we adore, 
and whom, having not seen, we love, and seem 
to see forevermore from Genesis to Malachi; so 
that every page becomes like an album-leaf — glo- 
rious with some new portrait of the Son of God. 

4. Special attention ought at least to be 
called to the Paradoxes of Prophecy, in some 
respects most remarkable of all the witnesses to 
Christ to be found in the Old Testament. 

A paradox is a see7ning' contvddiction'^ no real 
absurdity is involved, but it presents an enigma 
which, without the clue, may be impossible of 

* Liddon, 48. 



206 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

solution. The Old Testament abounds in para- 
doxes about the Messiah, which were, and still 
are, absolute mysteries, except as the New Testa- 
ment helps to solve them. 

This coming One was to be son of God and 
yet son of man; born of a virgin yet his birth 
holy and immaculate; his form one of transcend- 
ent beauty and loveliness, yet he was without 
form or comeliness, his visage marred; he was 
to be a man of sorrows, acquainted with griefs, 
yet anointed with the oil of gladness above his 
fellows; he was to be the son of David yet 
David's Lord; the king of war, yet the prince of 
peace, etc. 

If his garments were parted among the sol- 
diers what occasion was there to cast lots on his 
vesture, to determine to whom it should fall? The 
crucifixion scene solves the problem — they did 
part his raiment, but when they came to the seam- 
less robe, they assigned by lot, what they were 
ashamed to destroy by rending it. 

These paradoxes abound in all parts of the 
Old Testament prophecies. Sometimes they are 
grouped so closely and in such plain terms as to 
remind us of oriental puzzles, like the oracular 
responses or the mystery of the sphynx. For 
instance in Isaiah ix, 6, this Messianic personage 
is first called a son, born to Israel; ^nd yet what 
a fivefold name is applied to him? the wonderful 
— or miracle, — counsellor, the Mighty God, the 
Father of Eternity, the Prince of Peace! A child, 
born as a son to a family of Israel, yet having in- 
finite Power, and Wisdom; and this son of time 
is the Father of Eternity, this weak babe is the 
God of All Might. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 207 

The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah presents the 
most startling of these paradoxes. In fact they 
seem designed to present a prophetic enigma 
which only the person of Christ can solve. 

He was cut off from the land of the living, a 
young man and without offspring, and yet he 
shall prolong his days, and shall see his seed, and 
they shall be so numerous that even his great 
soul shall be satisfied. He is to be put to death 
as a despised malefactor, to make his grave with 
the wicked, and yet the sepulchre of the rich is 
to be his tomb. He is to be scorned and rejected 
of men and yet to justify many, and though him- 
self treated as a transgressor is to make interces- 
sion for the transgressors. 

If one can imagine a series of paradoxes 
more completely perplexing than these, what 
would they be! The solution, furnished in the 
double nature of the God-man, seems to us now, 
simple enough. But let us put ourselves by an 
effort of imagination back two thousand years in 
history and with the eyes of a devout Jew read 
these prophetic problems. How utterly hopeless 
all effort to explain or reconcile such contradic- 
tory statements. In fact the later Jewish doctors 
had recourse to the tJtvention of a double Messiah 
as the only clue to these mazes.* 

He was to be emphatically overwhelmed in 
adversity, and in mortal sufferings pour out his 
soul; and yet to see the pleasure of the Lord 
prosper in his hand; and while himself a victim, 
a worm crushed under the feet of his persecutors, 
he is to triumph over his victors, and divide the 
spoils like a universal conqueror. 

*Liddon, 86. 



208 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

This divine riddle waits seven hundred years 
for an interpretation. Then, at the time and 
place indicated, a babe is born of a virgin, being 
conceived of the Holy Ghost; in the flesh he was 
a man; in the spirit, he was God; in outward sur- 
roundings lowly, poor, obscure; in essence having 
the glory, dignity, riches of God; a man of sor- 
rows yet filled with the unfathomable peace of 
God; David's son according to the flesh, yet the 
Lord of David according to the spirit. Dying 
on the cross, yet a young man, he travailed in 
soul and brought forth a seed so numerous that 
they shall outnumber the sands of the seashore; 
died as a criminal, and as a criminal his body 
would have been flung over the walls to be burned 
like offial in the fires of Topheth: but when his 
vicarious suflierings were finished, no further in- 
dignity could be permitted even to the lifeless 
body, and so it was tenderly taken down, wrapped 
in clean linen by gentle hands, and laid in a rich 
man's sepulchre, wherein never yet man was laid. 
Only a virgin womb could conceive, only a vir- 
gin tomb receive, the body of God's immaculate 
son. 

The lines of an Ionic column were once sup- 
posed to be parallel: but it was found that if pro- 
duced to a sufficient distance above the capital, 
they at last touch. These prophetic paradoxes 
are like stately Ionic columns in the structure of 
Revelation. Their lines seem parallel, and we 
seek in vain any point of convergence. But pro- 
jected into the centuries, they meet at last in 
Jesus of Nazareth, the only solution of their seem- 
ing contradictions- 

How is it that, with such overwhelming proof 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 209 

that Jesus is in the Old Testament, any candid 
mind can escape the conclusion that a divine pen 
traced the prophecy and a divine person fulfilled 
the prophetic portrait. It would seem that in 
spite of a criticism that is destructive of every- 
thing yet constructive of nothing; in spite of a 
scepticism that would take away our Lord so that 
we know not where they have laid him, every 
honest man must say, the Scriptures could not 
have foretold the Christ if they were not inspired 
of God; and the Christ would not have been so 
foretold, the center of such converging rays of 
glory, if he had not been all he claimed. 

The sad fact is that we have yet to meet the 
first honest sceptic, or even destructive critic, who 
has carefully studied the prophecies which center 
in Christ. There is an amazing ignorance, if not 
indifference, as to the whole matter. Whatever 
attention is given to the Scriptures by such minds, 
is directed to the discovery of errors or blemishes, 
as though an astronomer should be so absorbed 
in the spots on the sun as never to consider the 
sunlight that floods creation and makes the spots 
visible. The discovery of an error in transcrip- 
tion, a mistake in names, figures or grammatical 
construction, is heralded from pole to pole; while 
it never occurs to these critics and sceptics, that 
this book must be a miracle in itself, since its 
slightest blemishes can attract the microscopic in- 
spection of the scholars of all the ages! 

"But," says some wise owl, "perhaps, after all, 
these multiplied correspondences are only acci- 
dental." Accidental? Do such objectors under- 
stand the laws of simple and compound probabil- 
ity? If one prediction be made and that only a 



210 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

general one, it may or may not be fulfilled, i, ^. , 
the chance of its fulfillment is represented by one- 
half. The moment another particular is added, 
each of the two predictions having one-half a 
chance of fulfillment the fraction representing the 
probability of both proving true is i^x^ = i^. 
We have passed from simple to cofnpound proba- 
bility. Now the possibility of a thousand partic- 
ular predictions, centering in one person at one 
time, is as ^ raised to its thousandth power', a 
fractional probability too small for figures to rep- 
resent. 

Some ways of meeting the argument from 
prophecy are so unfair and uncandid that they 
deserve a reference, only to show how desperate 
is the hatred of evil hearts toward the Word of 
God. Porphyry found such remarkable proph- 
ecies in Daniel, that while he admitted that his- 
tory had accurately verified them, even in the 
slightest particular, he resorted to the trick of 
suggesting that so exact a record could be written 
only after the events; and Voltaire used the same 
trick to evade the proof from New Testament 
prophecy. 

In this case, God has not left even this needle's 
eye for such camels to squeeze through. For 
there is a gap of fo7ir hundred years between 
Malachi and Matthew. God permitted the spirit 
of prophecy so early to die out, and the Old 
Testament canon to close centuries before our 
Lord was born. There was a design in it. He 
meant that there should be no chance of collision 
between the Old Testament prophets and the 
New Testament evangelists. There must be a 
long period of absolute silence between the utter- 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 211 

ance of prophecy and its fulfillment, that there 
might be no doubt as to the inspiration of the 
prophecy and the divine character of the Son of 
Mary. 

Bolingbroke resorted to a more cunning, but 
not less dishonest evasion. He admitted that the 
death of Christ was distinctly foretold in Isaiah 
liii; so distinctly and with so minute detail that it 
forced him to believe that Jesus, by a series of 
preconcerted measures actually brought on his own 
crucifixion merely to give disciples who came 
after Him the triumph of appeal to the old proph- 
ecies. 

Modern criticism tries another way of break- 
ing the force of this evidence, viz. by taking each 
individual prediction and saying of it, this is sim- 
ply a chance coincidence, and worthless in itself 
as an evidence. As though one were buying a 
huge hawser, to hold a ship at her moorings, and 
should untwist it, take up strand by strand and 
break it with his fingers and then say to him who 
would sell the cable, '*it \s worthless: there is not 
a strand in it that would hold a ship a moment. " 
Just so, but the strength of a cable is the strength 
of its strands braided together; and the strength 
of prophetic evidence is the united testimony of 
all these predictions. Any one might be insuffi- 
cient: all in one, irresistible!* 

Before we leave this astounding argument 
from prophecy, let us take one more rapid glance 
of review over the whole field of the evidence. 
At first, one germinal prediction, that branches 
out into minutest ramifications till the tiniest twig 



*See Gibson's "Foundations." 



212 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

is reached, each minute particular increasing, in 
geometric ratio, the impossibility of a chance ful- 
filment. Jesus of Bethlehem is born and as every 
particular of his history corresponds with every 
particular of the prophecy, every branch and twig 
of the prophetic 'plant of renown' grows radiant 
till the plant becomes a Burning Bush, and like 
Moses we loose our shoes and veil our eyes, for 
the place is holy ground. 

"In the volume of the Book it is written of 
me. " Yes, there is only one Book, and only one 
person — the Book manifestly written for the per- 
son; the person manifestly before the Book, to 
inspire it; after it, to crown and complete it. 
There are, as Luke said to Theophilus, ''many 
infallible proofs.'' Among all external, historical 
proofs, prophecy is the unanswerable argument. 
Among all internal and experimental proofs, the 
one all-sufficient is the person of Christ, Abra- 
ham saw His day afar off, and was glad; Moses 
wrote of Him, David sang of Him, and all this is 
so plain that, as our Lord said, "if they believe 
not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be 
persuaded though one rose from the dead. " 

Even history was prophetic. "Each victory, 
each deliverance, prefigured Messiah's work; each 
saint, each hero, foreshadowed some separate ray 
of His personal glory; each disaster gave strength 
to the mighty cry for His intervention. He was 
the true soul of the history, as well as of the po- 
etry and prophecy, of Israel." * 

Sir Joshua Reynolds closed his splendid lect- 
ures on art by saying: "And now, gentlemen, I 



* Liddon, 93. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 213 

have but one name to present to you: it is the 
incomparable Michael Angelo." And so all the 
prophets and poets, priests and historians, of the 
old covenant, seem to stand in reverent homage, 
pointing to the manger, the cross, the rent tomb, 
and the opening heaven, and uttering one incom- 
parable name. 

God has set His ''golden milestone" in the 
forum of the world, and all roads of prophecy and 
history terminate there. 

There are those who call themselves Christians 
who, instead of feeding on the pure milk or strong 
meat of the Word, are devouring the chaff or im- 
bibing the poison of an unsatisfying, godless sci- 
ence or sceptical philosophy, or who pay a modern 
antichrist to retail the blasphemies and sneers of 
Voltaire and his age, in their ears, and yet they 
wonder at their own doubts. Nothing seems cer- 
tain. They question whether the Bible be not, 
after all, the work of man, and whether Jesus be 
not at best only a myth or a mystery; whether 
death be not a leap in the dark, and heaven a 
dream of excited fancy. Poor, deluded souls! 
As though a disciple could grow strong and walk 
erect in the conscious confidence of an unshaka- 
ble faith, who breathes only the stifling atmos- 
phere of a prayerless life, and feeds on husks fit 
only for swine, while God's manna, every morn- 
ing fresh, may be gathered in the fields of the 
Word. The sovereign cure for all doubting dis- 
ciples is to immerse themselves in the Word of 
God, as a vessel is dipped in the sea till it is filled 
and overflows. Nothing but God'^s own truth can 
displace the uncertainty of scepticism. 

How sublime is the attitude of our Lord him- 



214 



MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 



self! Standing forevermore with his hand on the 
Jewish canon, He calmly looks both opponents 
and disciples in the face and says: "Search the 
Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life; and they are they which testify of me." * 

* Liddon, 96. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 
"Truly, this was the Son of God." — Matthew xxvii:54. 

"Go a little deeper," said the wounded soldier 
of Napoleon's body-guard, as the surgeon was 
probing to find the ball lodged in his breast; *'go 
a little deeper, and you'll find the emperor. '' 

In the study of Christian evidences, having 
considered the witness of prophecy and of mira- 
cle, the harmony of the Word of God with science, 
and with our moral nature, we now go a little 
deeper and touch the heart of the whole body 
of Christianity — the PERSON OF CHRIST. Here 
is the focal center of all Christian evidence; when 
we reach and touch that heart, feel its divine throb, 
and know its divine love, our intellectual doubts 
vanish, and we are constrained to confess: "Truly, 
this is the Son of God. " 

'Nearly nineteen centuries ago, in an obscure 
town in Palestine, an event took place which has 
had more influence on the history of the world 
than any other since time began. A child was 
born — surely not so rare an occurrence as to 
awaken in itself any great interest. This was no 
son of distinguished parents, no heir to riches or 
royalty, no scion of a noble house, no prospective 
ruler of a world's empire. He was born in a sta- 
ble and cradled in a manger, because in the inn 
there was no room for the mother even in the 



216 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

crisis of the sorrow of her sex. Yet, about that 
natal hour, that lowly cradle and that humble child, 
the thought, love and life of millions have, from 
that day to this, been centred. 

The universal verdict concedes to Christ at 
least a grandly complete manhood. Pilate stands 
as the typical judge, saying, as he points to Jesus, 
''Behold the man!" Christ seems to represent 
humanity, in its broadest range and in a very spe- 
cial sense, as a man, and, in its ideal perfection, 
as the man. 

We have space to touch this grand theme only 
at a few prominent points: 

I. We notice about Jesus no narrow limits of 
individuality. James Watt suggests the inventor; 
Benjamin West, the painter; Napoleon, the war- 
rior; Columbus, the discoverer; Pitt, the states- 
man. Men of mark stand out from the mass with 
sharp, individual traits, as, in the apostolic com- 
pany, we think of Peter's impetuosity, PauTs en- 
ergy, John's love; and these traits both distinguish 
and separate certain men from others. 

But Christ's peculiarities did not isolate him 
from other men. Nothing stands out so promi- 
nently as to draw some to him from a sense of 
sympathy and similarity, and drive others from 
him by a feeling of natural antagonism. He is 
not so allied to any peculiar temperament as to 
impress others with a lack of power to understand 
their individual cast of character. Yet there is 
no lack of positiveness in this perfect man, like a 
coat fitting everybody, yet fitting nobody; no 
such elasticity of character as stretches or contracts 
to suit every new demand; but such a common 
fitness as tells of something in common with every 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 21? 

man; a beautiful fulfilment of the scriptural figure 
that **as in water face answereth to face, so the 
heart of man to man." Any man, whatever his 
tastes or temperament, his type of mind or heart 
or disposition, finds in Jesus something answering 
to his need — a sympathizing brother! 

2. Nor was our Lord — this perfect man — lim- 
ited to a narrow nationality. How marked is the 
profile of national character! Demosthenes is al- 
ways the Greek, Cicero the Roman, Hannibal the- 
Carthaginian; the Jew is always and everywhere 
the Jew; he scarcely associates, never assimi- 
lates or amalgamates, with any other people. 
Try to weave him into history; he is the iron for- 
ever unmixed with the clay; the scarlet thread is 
seen all through the fabric — never lost sight of 
amid the other colors of the woof. And yet Jesus 
was a Jew, and yet less a Jew than a man. 
Paul could say, "I am a Jew;" but Jesus said with 
profoundest truth, *'I am the Son of Man" — not 
so much Hebrew as human, filling out the grand 
motto of Terence, ''Homo sum — et humani a m^e^ 
nil alienum puto!'^ 

3. Christ represents the generic man, and you 
will remember that the term "man" probably 
includes the woman as well as the man. ''God 
made man in His own image. In the image 
of God created He him; male and female cre- 
ated He them." The ideal man combines and 
includes the womanly graces with the manly 
virtues; that which is gentle and tender with 
that which is strong and firm. The king of 
birds has not only the stern eye, the firm beak, 
the strong talons, but the soft, downy breast as 
well; and the king of men will be a woman also. 



218 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

in the qtialities of heart which make her the radi- 
ant center of the home. Christ had the kingly 
majesty and the queenly grace; none could be 
manlier than He; yet, without being effeminate, 
He was feminine; without being womanish, He 
was womanly, also; and it is no marvel if woman 
showed toward Him all the reposeful trust she 
loves to exercise toward one on whose strength 
she may lean, and yet have all the intimate, sym- 
. pathetic devotion which she exhibits toward her 
own sex; and no marvel that 

"She, when the apostles fled, could danger brave, 
Last at His cross, and earliest at His grave." 

We are at a loss to say which predominated in 
Jesus, the manly or the womanly virtues. He who 
flamed with righteous indignation at the desecra- 
tion of His "Father's house," till every cord in 
His scourge burned like lightning and snapped 
like thunder, could graciously and gratefully ac- 
cept the kisses and caresses of a sorrowing sinner, 
bestowed on His feet; and He whose grand words 
of warning and wisdom have for two thousand 
years moved the world as great winds heave 
ocean waves, could melt the heart of a woman by 
one word, ''Mary," so that her tone of impatience 
gave place instantly to a rapturous, adoring ex-* 
clamation, '' Rabboni!'' — *'My dear Master!" Ro- 
manism makes a mistake in the Coronation of the 
Virgin, Queen of Heaven, as though the human 
heart needed another object of worship in whom 
the womanly graces should crystallize. Jesus has 
in Himself all that beautifies womanly character. 

4. Jesus Christ was certainly most remarka- 
ble in the perfect balance of opposite, or, rather, 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 219 

apposite qualities. We observe that few human 
characters combine the sterner virtues with the 
softer graces. You find gentleness, generosity, 
mildness and meekness in one class of men, and firm- 
ness, frugality, positiveness and energy in another; 
but how seldom do they meet and mingle in one 
character. Disraeli speaks, and you marvel at 
the polish and politeness of his dissection of his 
adversary's argument; but you detect, beneath all 
that suavity, the ferocity of a tiger; or you 
think of the anaconda, that licks his prey all over 
with his slimy tongue, preparatory to swallowing 
it! Can you, even in the most scorching re- 
bukes and denunciations of hypocrisy, and of rob- 
bery of the poor, even find one trace of a savage, 
hateful, vindictive spirit in the perfect man? 

Have you never remarked that the highest hu- 
man purity is generally like a soaring alpine peak, 
cold and chilling? It suggests whiteness as of 
virgin snows, and transparency as of ice-crystals, 
undefiled by earthly elements; but it suggests 
distance. Purity maybe attracted by purity, but 
impurity, even when coupled with penitence, is 
repelled; it cannot, dare not approach. There 
must have been something peculiar about the pu- 
rity of the Christ. He moved among men freely; 
sat down to eat with publicans and sinners; yet 
His garments took as little stain as the light in pass- 
ing through an impure atmosphere. And, though 
His very presence forbade the touch or whisper 
or breath of that which is defiled, the veriest out- 
casts of society were drawn to Him by resistless 
attraction, lavished tears of sorrow and kisses of 
love upon His feet, and broke flasks of precious 
ointment on His person! What a mystery! A pur- 



220 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

ity beside which even the snow is no longer clean, 
mingled with a compassion and sympathy to which 
the vilest sinners run for refuge as to the downy 
breast of some majestic bird! There was a di- 
vine quality in that purity that reminds one of the 
light, so pure, so incorruptible, yet falling on the 
sterile sand and slimy pool to call forth fair and 
fragrant blooms; or of the dew falling from above 
to rest alike on the most wholesome and the most 
noxious growths, and leave everywhere its impar- 
tial benediction. 

5. It is a grand fact that even the long test of 
nineteen centuries, and the close, severe, search- 
ing and microscopic criticism of these days, can- 
not find any flaw, not to say vice, in the Christ. 
How difficult it is for the generation in which 
a man lives to form a fair judgment of the man! 
Sometimes prejudice heaps faggots about him, and 
his true features are hidden by the smoke of mar- 
tyr fires; or, again, popular admiration or adora- 
tion burns incense before him, and his real self is 
obscured by clouds of excessive praise; and so 
we have to wait until the martyr-fires or the altar- 
fires go out, to see the real man; and what is the 
result? We often see the hero fade into a Nero, 
or the wretch rise into the saint. 

Wendell Phillips says, "If you penetrate the 
halo of military glory which surrounds the Duke 
of Marlborough, you will find the most purchasa- 
ble and infamous scoundrel of the age. '* Nearly 
two milleniums have passed since Jesus was mov- 
ing among men. Whatever praise or blame, 
friends or foes attached to Him in those days, we 
are able at this remote time to form a fair judg- 
ment of His character and career. And the ques- 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 221 

tion rings out, "What think ye of Christ?" Has 
any man ever dealt a successful blow at the blessed 
one, whom the reviling tongue calls the ''Chris- 
tian's idol?" Point out one vice, one real blem- 
ish, in that character or life! Examine as with 
microscopic eye, but the more minute the exam- 
ination the greater the disclosure of beauty. 

6. What magnanimity there was in this per- 
fect man! Even King James could send a petty 
gift of five shillings to rare Ben. Johnson — humil- 
iating the foremost poet of the day because his 
poverty forced him to live in an alley, and pro- 
voking the retort, "Go tell the king his soul lives 
in an alley!" But in Jesus you see no trace of 
narrowness — even of Jewish exclusiveness and 
prejudice; no small or mean sentiment; no selfish 
feeling; a broad catholicity without laxity; a gen- 
erous impartiality without indifference to truth and 
right. A great, grand soul as ever tabernacled in 
a human body! And yet nothing in His sur- 
roundings to educate Him into magnanimity; for 
the whole tendency of His age was toward narrow- 
ness and bigotry! 

This greatness of Christ's soul, this singular 
unselfishness and purity of His love, arrests the 
attention even of the most casual observer. The 
best and noblest men often betray, in the crises 
of life, a lingering self-love, and sometimes an 
idolatry of self-interest. Burke, a keen observer 
of human nature, has said that if you do a man 
a favor, and put him under lasting obligation to 
you, you sow in him the seeds of dislike. It hum- 
bles him to think that he owes promotion to any- 
thing but his own merits, and his pride is rebuked 
whenever he meets you; and so he becomes, un- 



222 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

consciously perhaps, alienated from you. Roche- 
foucauld has remarked that there is something in 
human nature which permits us to get a certain 
sort of satisfaction even from the misfortunes of 
our friends — a remark which is unhappily illus- 
trated when those who have been eminently suc- 
cessful experience the disaster of failure. 

Such frank confessions show the opinion which 
sagacious students of humanity form of the com- 
mon selfishness of the heart, to all of which Christ 
presents an exception, so unique, so conspicuous, 
so original, that our philosophy is at a loss to ex- 
plain it. Satan said of Job, *'A11 that a man hath 
will he give for his life" — boldly judging that to 
preserve his life, even a good man will make every 
other sacrifice; but how cheerfully did Jesus accept 
even a cruel and shameful death for the sake of 
His enemies! Well might the world stand amazed 
before His cross when the dying sufferer prays, 
** Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do!" and be dumb at sight of self-sacrifice, 
which was for the sake of service. And right here 
is, perhaps, the enigma of Christ's character. 
Whence came the inspiration of such self-sacrifice? 
All miracles of power are eclipsed by the miracle 
of His passion. In the agony and bloody sweat at 
Gethsemane, and the anguish and awfulness of the 
shameful death at Golgotha, there is something 
more overwhelming than in any of His mightiest 
works; and it was when He was ** lifted up" that 
He ''drew all men unto Him." Not what He did, 
but what He was in Himself, presents the most 
astounding miracle! 

An oriental fable represents a crowd of idlers, 
thronging the market-place of a Syrian city, and 



\ 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 223 

looking contemptuously upon a dead dog, with a 
halter around his neck, by which he had been 
dragged through the dirt. A viler, more abject, 
more unclean, more repulsive thing does not meet 
the eye of man, and those who stood by looked 
on with abhorrence. *' Faugh, "said one, holding 
his nose, "it pollutes the air!" *' How long," said 
another, "shall this foul beast offend the sight?" 
"Look at his torn hide," said another; "one could 
not even cut sandal-straps out of it. " And a fourth 
spoke of his ears, draggled and bloody: and a 
fifth declared "he had no doubt been hanged for 
thieving. " But there stood, among the throng, 
one, a stranger, who had, as they flung their jeers 
at the dead dog, drawn near; there was a strange 
light about his face, and in his whole mien a 
strange dignity and grace. Looking down com- 
passionately upon the dead animal, he said: 
" Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth. " 
Then the people turned to him with amazement, 
and said among themselves: "Who is this? This 
must be Jesus of Nazareth ; for only He could find 
something to pity and approve even in a dead 
dog!" And in shame they bowed their heads be- 
fore him, and went each on his way. 

How easy, how human, to say satirical things; 
to see only the repulsive side of character; to 
taunt the heedless and trample on the fallen! 
How strangely humane was He; how benign and 
merciful; how marvelously penetrating, seeking 
the beautiful amid the ugly, and finding what is 
attractive amid what is repulsive; detecting the 
germ of the saint in the chief of sinners, the out- 
cast woman and the hated publican! Like the 
benignity of Nature, that uses her elemental forces 



224 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

to bring beauty out of deformity until the clay 
crystallizes into the blue sapphire, the barren sands 
into the burning opal, the defiling soot into the 
radiant diamond, the foul water into snow-flakes 
and ice-crystals that rival the most exquisite gems 
for beauty of form and richness of luster; so He, 
with a divine condescension that makes even the 
lowliest great, beams upon poor, defiled, corrupt 
human nature, until a beauty develops that fur- 
nishes gems for the very crown of heaven's King — 
gems lustrous as stars! 

7. The Christ of the Bible stands alone in 
His sublime law of self-renunciation. At the very 
gate of the new life we are met by this motto: 
''Deny Thyself!'' There is a beautiful fable of 
Poussa, the Chinese potter — that he was required 
to produce a work for the emperor. He summoned 
to his aid all his genius and taste and skill; exe- 
cuted one after another task in porcelain, each a 
masterpiece, yet none worthy to be presented to 
his sovereign. His last work was in the oven, for 
the finishing process; but, in despair of ever be- 
ing able to produce anything of sufficient merit to 
adorn the imperial table, he threw himself into the 
furnace, and lo! there came out the most beautiful 
and perfect porcelain ever known— before it, after 
it, nothing to be compared with it. 

The Chinese sages wTote wiser than they knew. 
For the first and only time, this blessed Book has 
framed into a law the heroic principle of self-sac- 
rifice, teaching us that no work is so precious in 
His eyes as that which is made complete and beau- 
tiful by the offering of self — illustrating this law 
by a life, such as no uninspired mind ever drew 
even in outline. This precious Book tells us of 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 225 

one who resigned the throne and crown of heaven, 
exchanged the radiant robe of the universal King 
for the garment of a servant, descended to earth, 
condescended to human want and woe and wick- 
edness, lay in a lowly cradle in a cattle-stall at 
Bethlehem, and hung upon a cross of shame on 
Calvary, that even those who crucified Him might 
be forgiven. Can you span the chasm between 
the throne of a universe and that cross? a crown 
of stars and a crown of thorns? the worship of 
the host of heaven and the mockery of an insult- 
ing mob? When you can bridge that gulf, you 
may know something of the divine grandeur of 
such self-sacrifice. Whence such a conception of 
heroism? There is nothing like it in history, not 
even in fable; poets and philosophers have not 
approached it; the highest unselfishness is selfish 
beside it. Could it be the invention of impostors, 
or the wild dream of deluded fanatics? Is there 
any supposition that meets the case save this — 
that it was first a divine fact, expressing and ex- 
emplifying the divine idea? 

8. When we endeavor to picture Him to our- 
selves, no beauty of face, form, figure, can do jus- 
tice to His perfection. Put the ''brow of Jupiter 
on the form of Apollo," and you have not ap- 
proached the beauty with which imagination in- 
vests His person. Give Him ''Luther's electrical 
smile, opening the window in a great soul," and 
you have nothing yet to express the divine charm 
of His winning grace, which, notwithstanding His 
majesty, drew little children to His arms. Give 
Him the wisdom of Solomon and the profound- 
ness of Aristotle, and the originality of Bacon; 
and all this cannot explain the words of Him who, 



226 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

by the confession of enemies, spake as never man 
spake, and who, in deaHng with truths the most 
subHme, never forgot to be simple, even in the 
forms of His illustrations! 

Here is the ideal of manhood, in mind as well 
as body. What thoughts, inspiring what words 
and works! What sublime conceptions, convinc- 
ing argument, wise counsel, powerful persuasion, 
perfect illustration, grand discrimination! 

What a heart — so pure, so noble! Was ever 
love so charming in its fervor, its sincerity, con- 
stancy, generosity, unselfishness? — nothing but a 
look of gentle reproach for the disciple who de- 
nied Him, and no word of bitterness even for the 
apostle who, with a kiss, betrayed Him. He left 
all ideals behind, in His reality. We think no 
more of the Roman notion of heroic virtue, 
the Greek notion of culture, the Italian idea of 
beauty; in presence of Jesus, all these fade, as 
stars grow pale at morning. 

"How, then," says Dr. Porter, "can it be ex- 
plained that forth from that generation came the 
loftiest and the loveliest, the simplest, yet the most 
complete ideal of a master, friend, example, Sav- 
iour of human kind, that the world has ever con- 
ceived; an ideal that, since it was furnished to man 
in the record, has never been altered except for 
the worse; a picture that no genius can retouch 
except to mar; a gem that no polisher can try to 
cut, except to break it; able to guide the oldest 
and to soothe the youngest of mankind; to add 
luster to our brightest joys, and to dispel our 
darkest fears? Whether realized in fact or re- 
garded only as an ideal, the conception of Jesus 
is the greatest miracle of the ages!" 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 227 

This humble Nazarene taught the race a new 
law of progress, viz: Self-oblivion. And since 
that cross was set upon Calvary, every grand step 
of advance for the race has been ''from scaffold to 
scaffold, and from stake to stake." He led the 
way in helping men to live, by himself dying, and 
the ideas he embodied have been ever since ''fight- 
ing their way against the original selfishness of 
human nature. " 

9. It is evident He was more than man. 
There is that in the PERSON OF Christ which has 
won almost involuntary homage from even scep- 
tical minds. Daniel Webster, who was the Doric 
pillar of New England, as Edward Everett was 
its Corinthian column, drew up, just before his 
death, the following Declaration of Faith. As his 
was confessedly one of the few massive master- 
minds of history, it has double significance: 
"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." "The 
philosophical argument, especially that drawn 
from the vastness of the universe in comparison 
with the insignificance of this globe, has some- 
times shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; 
but my heart has always assured me and reas- 
sured me that the gospel of Jesus Christ must be 
a divine reality. The Sermon on the Mount can- 
not be a mere human production. This belief 
enters into the very depths of my conscience; the 
whole history of man proves it. " 

We set, side by side with this, the testimony 
of one other man, by common verdict one of the 
most remarkable of the race — the first Napoleon. 
While in banishment at St. Helena, conversing 
with General Bertrand, who contended that Jesus 
was simply a man of great genius and power to 



228 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

command and control, the exiled emperor said: 
''I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is 
not a man! Superficial minds see a resembl?nce 
between Christ and the founders of empires and 
the gods of other religions. That resemblance 
does not exist. There is between Christi-^nity 
and whatever other religions the distance of in- 
finity! We can say to the authors of every other 
religion, 'You are neither gods nor the agents of 
the Deity. You are but the missionaries of false- 
hood, moulded from the same clay with the rest 
of mortals. You are made with all the pass^'ons 
and vices inseparable from them. Your ter^ples 
and your priests proclaim your origin!' Pagan- 
ism was never accepted as truth by the wise men 
of Greece, neither by Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, 
Anaxagoras or Pericles. Paganism is the work 
of man. One can here read but our imbecility. 
What do these gods, so boastful, know more than 
other mortals — these legislators, these priests? 
Absolutely nothing!" 

When we study the marvelous history of those 
thirty-three years, we stand in presence of the 
most significant period of all history, folding in 
its bosom the most precious facts ever cherished 
in the heart of man. The existence of Jesus 
Christ is the pivot upon which turn the history 
and destiny of the world. This ane man, born 
in poverty and bred in obscurity; without rank, 
wealth, culture, or fame; who could call no spot 
home, and no great man his friend; who was 
hated by the influential men of church and state, 
and died as a criminal, by their united verdict; 
even whose tomb was the loan of charity, to save 
his body from being flung over the walls to the 



I 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 229 

accursed fires of Topheth — this one man somehow 
sways the world! We date our very letters and 
papers, not **Anno Mundi" — the year of the 
world — but ''Anno Domini" — the year of our 
Lord; and even he who, from his dark chamber 
of doibt and disbelief, sends out his assaults upon 
Jesus of Nazareth, still dates his pen's production 
*' Anno Domini" — unwillingly bowing to Christ's 
Lordship, even of the world's calendar! Even 
creation is forgotten, as the epoch from which all 
is to be reckoned, since that babe was born in 
Bethlehem of Judea — as though all history had 
a new birth then. Kings are anointed in His 
name; the grandest cathedrals unfold their white 
blossoms of stone to bear perpetual witness to 
His glory and beauty. Millions of believers offer 
Him the myrrh of their penitence for sin, the 
frankincense of their prayers and praise, the gold 
of their costliest offerings of gratitude and service ; 
and even the profane swearer rounds his oath 
with the precious name of Jesus, while no other 
name is spoken with such reverence by the pure 
and good! 

What shall I do then with Jesus? However, 
I may account for His existence or explain His 
character and career; whatever I may think of 
His being born of a virgin and begotten of the 
Holy Ghost — whatever I think of His words and 
works, as divine or human, He is Himself the 
miracle of history! Science and philosophy vainly 
try to account for Him or interpret Him. 

He stands absolutely alone in history; in 
teaching, in example, in character, an exception, 
a marvel, and He is Himself the evidence of 
Christianity. As Bishop Clark says, " He authen- 



230 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

ticates himself. " "The most natural solution of 
His life is the supernatural. The truths which He 
uttered were not truths which He had learned. 
He was the truth!" 

It is therefore no marvel that the Word of God 
is full of this wonderful personage. In the Brit- 
ish navy-yards, where all the cordage, from the 
huge hawser down to finest strands, has braided 
into it a peculiar scarlet thread, you cannot cut 
an inch off without finding it marked. So every- 
where, woven into and through the word you 
may find the scarlet thread — and beginning any- 
where, preach the blessed Christ. 

One of the most sublime facts in connection 
with this wondrous PERSON OF CHRIST is the 
strange hold He has upon millions of believers at 
this remote age. After eighteen centuries have 
passed, a large proportion of the human race, the 
most intelligent and the most lovely, can say of 
Christ, with Paul, ''Whom having not seen we 
love. " Everything connected with His personal 
life on earth has perished. We can only guess at 
the spot where he was born, the place where he 
lived, the site of the cross and the tomb; and yet, 
millions are living for Him, and would die for 
Him. They believe that this unseen presence 
inspires their faith, hope, love, life; that with this 
unseen Saviour they hold daily cornmunion; they 
go through the valley of tears, leaning on His 
arm; and they fear not the shadow of death, 
cheered by His smile. This fact is absolutely 
without a parallel, and it impressed the great Na- 
poleon more deeply than anything else about this 
mysterious person. He looked back through the 
centuries and saw the blood of Christian martyrs 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 231 

flowing in torrents, while they kissed the hand 
that, in slaying them, opened the door to Him. 
"You speak," said he, "of Caesar, Alexander, of 
their conquests; of the enthusiasm they enkindled 
in the hearts of their soldiers; but can you con- 
ceive of a dead man, making conquests with an 
army faithful and entirely devoted to His mem- 
ory? My army has forgotten me while living. 
Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself, have 
founded empires. But on what did we rest the 
creations of our genius? Upon force! Jesus 
Christ alone founded His empire upon love: and 
at this hour millions of men would die for Him. 
I have so inspired multitudes that they would die 
for me — but, after all, my presence was necessary 
— the lightning of my eye, my voice, a word from 
me — then the sacred fire was kindled in their 
hearts. Now, that I am at St. Helena, alone, 
chained upon this rock, who fights and wins em- 
pires for me? What an abyss between my deep 
misery and the eternal reign of Christ, who is 
proclaimed, loved, adored, and whose reign is 
extending over all the earth!" 

And so it is. A public life of three and a 
half years, ending with a death of shame at thir- 
ty-three; yet to-day swaying a world's history 
and destiny! 

Simple as was His speech, even yet His words 
move and mould the world! Theremin insists 
that "eloquence is virtue" — or, as Emerson puts 
it, "there is no true eloquence unless there is a 
man behind the speech," or as Carlyle adds, "he's 
God's anointed King, whose simple word can 
melt a million wills into his!" All the conditions 
of the most powerful and persuasive utterance 



232 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

meet in Him! Behind the speech, lay the perfect 
man — the divine soul; and with an indifference to 
the lapse of time which reminds us of the indif- 
ference of the telegraph to the stretch of space — at 
this remote day, his simple word melts millions of 
wills into His. He says 'follow me!' and on 
through flood and flame, over land or sea, move 
the true hosts of God's elect, in obedience to His 
word. 

We have referred to Christ's birth as attract- 
ing the gaze of the world. But if such interest 
gathers about His cradle, what shall be said of 
the interest that gathers about His cross? It was 
a cursed tree indeed, yet the tree of knowledge 
of good and of evil, w^hich is associated with the 
first sin and the original curse, has on Calvary 
been transformed into the tree of life, whose very 
leaves are for the healing of the nations — and 
whose fruit is abundant and perpetual! That 
cross of shame is the most precious object that 
the eye of faith rests upon. It is the focal point 
of history — toward that, all lines converge from 
the creation, and from it all lines diverge and ra- 
diate until the end of the world. 

Again we ask what then shall we do with 
Jesus who is called Christ? We calmly and rev- 
erently say, there is no middle ground. Here is 
a gigantic fraud, in comparison witli which, all 
the dishonesties, perjuries, and villainies of men 
sink into insignificance — as mole-hills are forgot- 
ten under the shadow of colossal mountains; or 
else here is the one gigantic fact of history, the 
one grand personage of all the ages and eterni- 
ties, the God-man — creator, ruler, judge of all 
mankind, the Anointed Messiah, and only Re- 



THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 233 

deemer. No middle ground! and yet you dare 
not call Him an incarnation of fraud — reason and 
conscience alike forbid; and only when men have 
ripened or rotted into the most daring and des- 
perate blasphemy, apostates both from God and 
a right mind and a pure heart, have they dared to 
hint that Jesus Christ was a deceiver! And when 
a man does venture such self-evident blasphemy, 
his own companions in scepticism shrink back 
from him as himself as great a fraud as he makes 
the Nazarene to be. 

We repeat there is no middle ground; either we 
must curse him as a wretch or we must crown him 
as the King. To such as claim to hold neutral 
ground and cast no vote, He significantly says, 
*' he that is not with me is against me. '' If He be a 
gigantic deceiver, we can be guiltless, only as we 
do what we are able to meet gigantic imposture 
with effective resistance, and are bound therefore 
to be His pronounced foes. If He be the King — 
man's only Saviour, your final judge — then awful 
guilt and terrible exposure, if we simply withhold 
ourselves from His service, or above all lend aid 
or comfort to His foes! We are, by obligations 
of the highest sort, bound to be His pronounced 
friends, and to do our best and utmost to lead 
others to see and confess His beauty, and bow to 
His supremacy. 

With majestic and imperial authority truth and 
duty call on us all, in tones of thunder, to choose at 
once, what they will do with Jesus! No candid 
man dares to be indifferent to the issue. Jesus 
Christ is or He is not the way, the truth, the life. 
If He be, then better we had not been born, than 
to wander from this way, deny this truth, forfeit 
this life. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 

*'He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on 
Him the seed of Abraham." — Hebrews ii: i6. 

The mystery of the God-Man! Such a mys- 
tery implies both glory and obscurity; and a care- 
less, irreverent handling of such a theme only less- 
ens the glory and deepens the obscurity. No 
human philosophy can clear away the cloud which 
has ever hung about Christ. Conceding the truth 
of the Bible portrait, the accuracy of the script- 
ural representation, that Jesus Christ was *' God 
manifest in the flesh;" that He, for the first and 
only time in history, exhibited in Himself the 
union of the human and the divine natures in one 
person; that He was a proper Son of God and 
proper Son of Man, still we have necessary mys- 
tery. We are so constituted that we can under- 
stand nothing which is not in accord with our ex- 
perience. Everything that is new to us is com- 
prehended only by the aid of that which is old; 
we find in it a combination or arrangement which 
is novel, yet the principal elements, which are 
combined and arranged, are more or less familiar. 
What we call ''invention" or ''discovery "does not 
proceed by huge strides or leaps, but step by 
step. Some new feature is added to. that which 
is already familiar. An old machine is put to new 
uses or takes a new form; a common agent is 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD MAN. 235 

linked to new and perhaps strange appliances, as 
when steam or hot air is employed as a motive- 
power; two or more long-known appliances are 
united, to accomplish what neither could alone; 
but, in a peculiar sense, "there is nothing new un- 
der the sun." Even such a startling marvel as 
Edison's phonograph is simply the application of 
certain facts and principles, well understood in the 
scientific world, viz: that sound, like light and 
heat and color, is a mode of motion; that the 
differences in sound are due to the varying rapid- 
ity of sound vibrations; that these vibrations may 
be made to impress and record themselves upon a 
sensitive surface, like tin-foil; and that, under 
proper conditions, the impressions so recorded 
may again reflect or reproduce vibrations similar 
to the first, as the stereotype casts made fromi 
type may be used to mould new type. ''New in- 
ventions ''are simply improvements upon the forms, 
methods, modes of appliance, or combinations 
and conditions of elements and principles already 
known. We rise to the height of each new dis- 
covery upon the step furnished by that which pre- 
ceded; and so we are prepared to understand 
what is new and strange. If to-day some entirely 
new principle should be revealed, which should 
contradict all previous notions and revolutionize 
our whole theory of mechanics — effecting combi- 
nations before believed to be impossible, and by 
means and modes hitherto unknown — it could be 
to all of us only a mystery. Men skilled in me- 
chanics and in science and philosophy would sim- 
ply confess,- ** We do not comprehend this;" and 
it would only be when familiarity with the fact of 
its reality had destroyed its novelty, that we should 



236 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

be able to think of it without surprise and 
wonder. 

Admitting that Jesus was indeed the God-man, 
the hope is vain of either escaping or explaining 
the mystery which invests Him; for he presents 
the phenomenon of history, original, unique, sol- 
itary; no being like Him, before or after. Here 
is a combination heretofore supposed to be con- 
tradictory and im.possible! God is infinite; space 
cannot contain Him, nor time limit Him. Man is 
finite, fenced in by definite bounds. How can 
the unlimited and limited combine and unite? All 
our previous notions of things are contradicted in 
the God-man. God is omnipresent; yet here is 
God, submitting to the laws and limits of a hu- 
man body, which can occupy but one place at any 
one time, and must, by the law of locomotion, 
take time for a transfer from place to place. God 
is omniscient; yet here is a being claiming equal 
ity with Jehovah, yet affirming that there are 
some things w^hich as a man, and even as the 
Messiah, He knows not. God is omnipotent; yet 
the God-man says He *' can do nothing of himself, " 
and that it is God dwelling in Him that ''doeth 
the works. " 

How can we understand or explain this sub- 
lime and stupendous mystery? We cannot. Allow 
the fact to be true; concede and confess4:he reality; 
the gospel itself attempts no solution of the 
enigma, because we can interpret that which is 
new only with the aid of that which is old; and 
here no aid can be gotten from that which is old. 
Christ is wholly new — a man with human infirm- 
ties, without human sin or sinfulness; poor, yet 
having at His disposal universal riches; weak and 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD MAN. 237 

weary, yet having the exhaustless energy of God; 
unable to resist the violence and insults of His 
foes, yet able to summon legions of angels at a 
word or wish; suffering, yet incapable of anything 
but perfect bliss; dying, yet Himself having nei- 
ther beginning of days nor end of years. Can you 
or I understand a being who in Himself presents 
such a combination? 

What is there in our experience or observation 
to help us in the interpretation of a mystery so 
profound as that of the God-man? Nothing — 
absolutely nothing? Should we start with the faint- 
est hope of removing or penetrating the cloud sur- 
rounding Him, we should only be proclaiming our 
own folly, and not only so, but degrading this sub- 
lime personage to the low level of our common 
humanity; for the expectation of fully understand- 
ing and comprehenvding Him implies another ex- 
pectation — that we shall find in Him nothing 
essentially above the plane of purely human char- 
acter and career. To admit that He may be more 
than man is to admit that we may find in Him 
what we cannot explain. But mark, that the very- 
mystery which invests Christ, and of which we 
cannot divest Him, is an argument for His reality 
as the God-man; for, as we could not understand 
such a being, neither could we, of ourselves, im- 
agine or invent a God-man. 

This important thought needs to be expanded 
and emphasized. We have seen that we can un- 
derstand only what accords with our experience. 
So does our experience assist us in all creations 
even of imagination and fancy. What we call 
original conceptions are only original forms or 
combinations of older ideas. A painter may use 



238 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

a brush to represent a scene, the Hke of which 
never existed; but he is putting together things 
which he has seen. Even a crazy artist, who 
might paint trees with feathers for foHage, and 
mountains with ice-fields at their base and tropical 
gardens at their summits, or men with eyes in 
their feet, and hands growing out of their heads, 
would only be putting together, in grotesque 
shapes and strange union, things which he had 
seen. And so man never conceives anything ab- 
solutely new; without his experience to aid him, 
he could invent nothing new, or if he did, it 
could be only absurdity and contradiction. 

Among the fabled creatures of mythology were 
the centaur, faun, mermaid. The centaur was a 
monster, half man and half horse, said to have in- 
habited a part of Thessaly. But such creation 
involves an absurdity; for the arms of the man 
correspond to the forelegs of the horse, and a 
compound like this involves a double set of bones 
and muscles and organs, such as pertain to the 
upper part of the trunk. The faun had the legs, 
feet and ears of the goat, with the rest of the body 
human. But here again is absurdity; for a goat 
is a grass-eating animal, and man is not; and 
there are constitutional differences that defy com- 
bination. The mermaid was half woman, uniting 
to the human head and body the tait of the fish. 
But the fish is anatomically a different creature, 
with totally different habits; the fish breathes in 
the water, where man drowns. And so all these 
inventions of fable are absurdities. When man 
tries to form a new creation, even of fancy, by 
combining things which do not exist together, he 
blunders into grotesque absurdities. 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN, 239 

Now, whence came the idea of the God-man? 
There was nothing in man's experience to suggest 
it, and yet, with all its mystery, there is no ab- 
surdity. The person and character and career of 
Jesus are exactly what might be expected if God 
actually became man; and yet there was no ex- 
perience to help even in the forming of such a 
new and harmonious conception. Men had often 
imagined the *'gods as coming down, in the like- 
ness of men;" the pagan religions are full of such 
incarnations; but they are not at all like the mys- 
tery of the God-man, for they represent God as 
taking on Him a human form only; they are man- 
ifestations of God. Here is the only true incar- 
nation of God — God in a human body, with a 
human soul; and yet there are no absurdities. It 
is not two beings somehow united, nor two per- 
sons with two minds, two wills, two conflicting 
existences, wedded in impossible bonds; but one 
being, harmonious, symmetrical, consistent — not 
God in man, or God and man, but the God- 
man. 

We ask again, whence came such an idea and 
ideal? Deny the reality, and your denial com- 
pels you to account for the conception ! The at- 
tempt to escape one mystery involves you in one 
even greater. Here is a labyrinth; you are lost 
in a maze of perplexing paths; you may flee from 
the perplexity of the God-man to the denial of 
His reality, but neither path leads you out of the 
labyrinth. And there is but one path that does. 
Here is the clue: admit that Christ was an abso- 
lutely new being, the union of the divine and the 
human in one person, and that the evangelists 
simply give an honest portrait of this marvelous 



240 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

personage, without attempting to explain the pro- 
found mystery which hangs about Him, and you 
have a plain, straight road out of the labyrinth! 
Here, as the innocent Irish maid said, is "the en- 
trance to get out at." And the only possible or 
rational solution of the enigma is faith in the wit- 
ness of the Word to Christ, and in the witness of 
Christ to himself; for if the reality did not exist, 
the conception is more marvelous, mysterious, 
miraculous, than the person of the God-man him- 
self! 

While confessing the mystery of the God-man, 
and having no design or desire to attempt the ab- 
surd task of clearing up the mystery, into the 
depths of which ''angels desire to look," there are 
many things about the person of Christ and the 
whole subject which may be seen in much clearer 
light than they commonly are. 

There is a wide difference between mystery 
and mist; and, while standing in awe before an 
impenetrable mystery, we may penetrate the mist. 
In other words, false or partial conceptions, or half- 
truths, make the mystery needlessly greater, and 
involve us in useless doubt, and tempt us to dan- 
gerous denial and disbelief of truth and fact. 

Let us then seek to pierce, or rise above, the 
mist of vague, partial, mistaken notions, with 
which we often surround the God- man, and get 
clearer views at least of the mystery itself. And, 
if we still find, that He soars, like a mountain, far 
above our sight or thought, into altitudes so sub- 
lime, that even on wings of imagination we can- 
not follow him; perhaps we may still get near 
enough to see the mountain, without needless 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 241 

mist or haze, or even the dimness of distance be- 
tween. 

There is an old fable of 'the Knights and the 
Shield.' Some proud old baron had exalted a 
shield by the roadside, as the pious monks of 
Germany set the crucifix in shrines along the 
routes of travel, that the devout passer-by may 
tarry to pray before the sacred symbol of his 
faith. One day two brave knights of yore met 
at a castle, near by where the famous ancestral 
shield stood. And one said to the other, ''Have 
you seen the baron's shield?" "I have." **And 
how do you read the inscription?" And he gave 
the words, as he had been able to read the half- 
worn motto. But the other insisted that he was 
wholly wrong: he had himself read it carefully 
and it was entirely different. And then they 
grew angry and w^ould have fought, but a stran- 
ger passing by, and hearing their contention, 
counselled them to go together and examine the 
shield once more. And lo, they found that the 
shield had two sides and each side its own motto. 
They had approached it from different directions, 
and each read the side that faced him. Each was 
right, because he told the truth; each was wrong, 
because he told but the half-truth which was all 
he knew. 

In all that follows, let us bear in mind that 
here is a being to whom there are two sides or 
aspects. Whether we see one side or the other 
will depend on the direction from which we ap- 
proach, and the point of view we occupy. And 
if we do not wish to be misled by half-truths, we 
must look at both sides; and, in all our study 
of the God-man, keep in mind both the divine 



242 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and the human elements so mysteriously mingled. 
Only so shall we prevent adding to mystery our 
own misapprehension. 

The Bible is confessedly the most remarkable 
book of the ages: and Jesus Christ is confessedly 
the most remarkable person of the ages. And 
this book and this person are so remarkably con- 
nected, that the mysterious link which unites 
them is not less wonderful than the book and the 
man themselves. 

On close examination and comparison of the 
Holy Scriptures and the Holy Child, we have 
found that he bears to them so close a relation 
that they actually contain a minute history of Jesus 
centuries before his birth. Here is a biographical 
sketch, a kind of portrait of a man, prepared, 
without doubt, hundreds of years previous to his 
advent. The very year and place of his birth, 
his life and death, his crucifixion and resurrection, 
with many of the most marked features of his 
character and career, even to the beast on which 
he made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and 
the treacherous bargain by which a disciple be- 
trayed him, the exact sum which was the traitor's 
hire, the insults that were heaped upon him at his 
trial, the mockeries that derided his dying agon- 
ies, and the peculiar facts of his burial: these and 
many other minute matters, are recorded long 
before one of the events either happened, or could 
have been foreseen by the most sagacious con- 
jecture. 

Take a man of intelligence, a stranger to the 
Christian religion; place before him the Jewish 
Scriptures, calling special attention to the portrait 
which they furnish of one whom they call "God's 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 243 

Servant" or "Anointed." Then ask him to note 
that the Old Testament writer lived more than 
three centuries before the Christian era; and that 
we have historic proof that these Jewish Scrip- 
tures, in their complete form, were in the hands 
of the Jews for three hundred years before that 
era began. Then place before him a copy of the 
Christian Scriptures, and ask him to read the 
gospels, and note that they were never in exist- 
ence till at least four hundred years after the last 
Old Testament writer laid down his pen. And, 
without suggesting any divine or supernatural 
element, either in the writings, or in the person 
of Christ, leave him to compare the two. With 
what amazement would he find all the main facts, 
recorded in these gospel narratives, long before 
anticipated in these writings? The fact of this 
correspondence is so familiar to us, that its force 
is greatly lessened. But imagine an instance in 
our own day. It seems but yesterday that Mr. 
Lincoln died by the hand of an assassin: and 
his history, from his lowly beginnings as the child 
of poverty, up to his heroic end, as the martyr of 
liberty, is familiar even to our children. But 
what if, in the works of Francis Bacon, there 
were found an exact and minute sketch of this 
coming President, three hundred years before; 
not one particular of which failed to correspond 
with the facts! and how would our amazement 
increase, should we find a score or more of writers 
in different centuries and countries, long before 
Bacon, supplying other and equally important 
material for this prophetic biography! With what 
august woncer would we compare the facts, so 
well known to us, with the forecast of them in 



244 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

these writings of the by-gone centuries! and with 
what candor would we inquire for an explanation! 

II. Of this mysterious correspondence be- 
tween the Jewish Scriptures and the person of 
Christ, those Scriptures themselves give a solu- 
tion. They declare that this wonderful person is 
the Son of God and the Messiah, anointed of 
God for the salvation of men; and that, so im- 
portant was his advent, that the holy men of old 
were inspired of God to tell, in advance, the 
story of his life and death! 

Let us again suppose this unprejudiced stran- 
ger, who has with amazement traced the history 
of Christ in the prophecy of the Old Testament, 
to meet, in those very Scriptures, this explana- 
tion. Would he not be disposed to regard this 
as a rational solution of the problem? It is an 
accepted canon of criticism, that if an hypothesis 
supplies a satisfactory basis for the harmonizing 
of facts or truths, it is not worth while to look 
further: we may accept it as the truth. Thus 
Kepler, after repeated trials, struck the real law 
that rules in the solar system; and, as that law 
which was at first only a supposition, has so far 
reconciled all known facts, and solved all appar- 
ent difficulties, we do not hesitate to call his guess, 
a discovery! Certainly, there is about the exact 
fulfilment of the prophetic portrait in the person 
of Christ, a problem demanding a solution; and, 
if the solution, afforded by the Scriptures them- 
selves, proves a satisfactory one, why should we 
hesitate to accept it? 

Does the Person of Christ then correspond to 
this Bible basis of solution, viz: that he was son 
of God as well as son of man, and anointed for a 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 245 

special office, namely, to fulfil the law in a perfect 
life, and then atone for sin by a vicarious death? 

It is proper to examine this great question in 
a scientific spirit. We have already considered 
Jesus Christ simply as an historic personage, a 
man of singular symmetry of character, who 
towered above the level of ordinary men as the 
peaks of the Himmalayas tower toward the stars; 
and now we look at him as the Messiah of Scrip- 
ture, and as claiming to unite in himself both the 
divine and human natures. 

How shall we explain the mystery of this 
complex person and character, on a Bible basis? 

The solution is given us by Paul, Romans i, 
3,4. " Concerning His Son Jesus Christ who was 
made of the seed of David according to the flesh, 
and declared to be the son of God with power, 
according to the spirit of holiness by the resur- 
rection from the dead." Accept this solution, 
and the problem is solved. Not that this Incarn- 
ation of God in human nature, this mediation 
between the finite and the infinite, the union of 
God and man in one person, is without mystery; 
not that we can distinguish the divine from the 
human — define their boundaries and determine 
their limits; say just where one ends and the 
other begins; not that we claim to be able to an- 
swer the question how two natures can combine 
in one person, and not destroy individuality and 
identity. I am a mystery to myself. I see a 
body; a mind, or thinking power; a heart, or 
loving power, united in myself; each capable of 
individual activity, and yet all making one man. 
I do not dispute the fact while I cannot penetrate 
the mystery. Even so, **I bow before the mys- 



246 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

tery of His complex person, and do not ask to 
have it resolved ! " For if I know that there com- 
bine in me two natures, the physical and the 
spiritual, and the complexity is still a perplexity, 
is it reasonable to reject the fact of Christ's com- 
plex person because I have no philosophy for the 
fact? 

III. The Scriptures boldly present both sides 
of the God-man. The son of man appears every- 
where—there is a human mother, and a human 
birth — a human nature and growth in wisdom and 
stature — he has needs like men; feels weakness 
and weariness, hunger and thirst, craves human 
companionship and friendship, sympathy and love 
— is a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, 
touches humanity with the tenderness of conscious 
brotherhood; indeed as we, following his career, 
behold him growing, weeping, suffering, dying, 
there is so much of the man in all this — such ex- 
perience is so intensely human, that it veils and 
obscures the divine element. And yet the Bible 
does not hide these human infirmities, but m.akes 
them a necessity to his completeness as the God- 
man. 

Philip, ii: 7: "He took upon him the form of 
a servant, *' and the fashion of a man. *'He emp- 
tied himself" of his divine glory, and laid his di- 
vine attributes, omnipotence, omniscience, omni- 
presence, under temporary voluntary limitations; 
it was a part of his humiliation, that he conde- 
scended to human infirmities, to accept as his lot 
human want and woe, so far as consistent for a 
sinless man; that he might be a brother to man, 
the representative man himself, and a "merciful 
and faithful high priest, "able to sympathize with, 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 247 

and succor, the tempted, because himself having 
been tempted or tried. This is the Book's expla- 
nation of the person; and of the perplexing prob- 
lem of his double nature as the God-man. 

Yet he boldly affirmed concerning himself the 
essential quality with God which left him free to 
lay aside, even as he had assumed, the form of a 
servant. *'I have power,*' said he, *'to lay down 
my life" — that, any martyr might say, choosing 
to die for the truth's sake: but he added, what no 
created being could say, '*I have power to take it 
again." 

As we turn over page after page of the sacred 
book, we get a glimpse now of his humanity and 
now of his divinity. It is like a dissolving view, 
now his human nature is clearly seen, and again 
his divine appears with equal clearness; and one 
melts into the other, so that we cannot say where 
one ceases, and the other begins, to appear. We 
are constrained to say. He is divine. Yet this 
strange personage weeps at the grave of his friend 
Lazarus, proving himself '*of like passions" as 
ourselves, of active, tender, personal sympathy, 
uniting a perfect humanity with his divinity; not 
God in a human body, but God with a human 
soul. The divine speaks sublimely, "I am the 
resurrection and the life;" *' Thy brother shall rise 
again;" ''Lazarus, come forth!" The human 
speaks, in groans within himself; in tears of con- 
scious bereavement; in the question, ''Where have 
ye laid him?" 

And how consistent with the grandeur of the 
God- man is the sublime majestic reserve which he 
manifested. A human being, conscious that he 
was about, m the exercise of divine power, to re- 



248 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

store the dead to life and to the weeping sisters 
of Bethany, would have approached the sepul- 
chre with the excitement of conscious prerogative, 
with evident emotion and expectation — but the 
Lord Jesus moves as calmly and composedly as 
though calling the dead to life were as simple and 
as common as to speak the most ordinary words 
of a master to a servant. There is no pompous 
flourish — no show of needless energy. Angels 
might have been summoned to remove the stone 
— but man could do that, and so he simply said 
''take ye away the stone;'* and then used the life- 
giving word to accomplish what man could not. 
How like a man is the human element in all this: 
yet how unlike a man is that other element, 
which links the Christ to the invisible, omnipo- 
tent, eternal! 

IV. That there is not only a mystery but a 
paradox, in this complex person, we are quite 
ready candidly to confess. But the contradiction 
is, after all, only apparent. Project your parallel 
lines far enough, and they converge. 

Our ipain difficulty lies in forgetting that this 
personage is wholly unlike any other. Of God, 
we have some conception to guide us in interpret- 
ing His words and works. Of man, we have a 
more complete knowledge, to aid us in understand- 
ing man. But here, for the 6rst and only time in 
history, appears one who asserts of himself, *'I 
am the Son of God," "1 am the son of man,'* in 
whom *' dwelt all the fullness of the God-head 
bodily;" yetwho "took on him the seed of Abra- 
ham." 

In all your progress through the apparent con- 
tradictions of the Bible portrait of Jesus, this idea 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 249 

of His complex person needs to be borne in mind; 
for it is the key that unlocks all perplexities. You 
expect to see now the human element made prom- 
inent, and, again, to see the divine equally con- 
spicuous; and it is a very notable fact that in the 
Gospel according to John, which most completely 
gives us Christ's witness concerning himself, He 
twelve times calls himself ''Son of Man," and just 
as many times "Son of God, " as though himself 
pointing us to both sides of the shield, and by 
repetition impressing the necessity of avoiding 
the falsehood which is really found in a half-truth. 

No part of the problem of Christ's witness 
concerning himself has caused more perplexity to 
Bible-readers than His contradictory declaration 
as to His equality with God. At one moment we 
hear Him say, **I and my Father are one," — and 
that the Jews understood Him to mean the unity 
not of mere sympathy, but of equality, is plain; 
for "they took up stones to stone Him" for the 
blasphemy of making himself equal with God. 
And yet He said, "My Father is greater than I;" 
and to unravel this tangled skein of perplexity, 
men have suggested that He was only a created 
being, or an inferior order of divine being — Di- 
vinity, but not Deity. 

Is it well to resort to a solution that itself pre- 
sents a new problem, demanding a new solution? 
If Christ were a creature, then His testimony to 
himself is false; if an inferior order of divine be- 
ing, the unity of the Godhead is lost, and we have 
not only polytheism, but different grades of gods! 
But we are perplexed to know how a being can 
be divine and yet not have divine attributes; yet, 
if omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, can there 



250 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

be degrees in omniscience, etc.? Can one God 
know all and do all and be everywhere, and an- 
other know and do more than He, or be any- 
where where He is not? If we are going to hold 
such absurdities as these, let us admit that the 
bulls of the Irishman afford us a good type for 
doctrinal and theological statements. 

On matters which perplex the wisest, it is with 
becoming modesty that one ventures even a sug- 
gestion. Absolute equality may co-exist with rel- 
ative inequality, and absolute inequality with 
relative equality; and these terms imply no real 
contradiction. We venture an illustration, with 
the caution that an illustration is not an analogy. 
An analogy is supposed to fit at every point; an 
illustration only at the precise point at which it is 
applied. What we seek to illustrate, is the state- 
ment that absolute equality and relative inequality 
are consistent, and conversely, but w^e are not 
illustrating the mode of the divine existence, etc. 

A firm is composed of three men, who are ab- 
solutely equal in amount of capital invested, in 
capacity for business, in share of profits; if you 
please, in culture, social standing and personal 
worth. Yet they agree that in all the purchase of 
goods no one shall act on his own responsibility, 
or except by instructions; or it may be agreed 
that one man shall keep the books MDr hire all 
clerks, in which case either of the others may 
properly say, ''I have no authority in this matter." 
Or, again, a college faculty, composed of men 
every way on absolute equality, may consent that 
one shall act as president, and may put in his 
hands the entire control. Here is absolute equal- 
ity, with relative inequality. On the other hand. 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 251 

a father sets up three sons in business as partners. 
They are of different ages, grades of culture and 
capacity; yet they are to share aHke in privileges 
and profits. Here is absolute inequality, with 
relative equality — and no inconsistency. 

These illustrations do not even touch the mys- 
tery of the Trinity and the double nature of the 
God-man; yet if we but understand our Lord as 
speaking at one time of that which is divine in 
himself, and again of that which is human — now 
in terms absolute, and now in terms relative — all 
difficulties are at least relieved, if not dissolved 
and dispelled! In the capacity of a man, He was 
inferior to God; in his character and office as Mes- 
siah, he was under subjection to Him that "sent 
him;" as a Son, he owed filial obedience to the 
Father. Now, if such terms as these express His 
essence. His whole nature. His complete self, then 
to apply to Him divine titles, offer Him divine 
honors, or pay Him divine worship, is certainly 
idolatry. But if these terms express not His sub- 
stance and essence, but His office and relation, 
then we are justified in looking back of these in- 
ferior titles to find His essential self. And the 
careful search into the Scriptures will show us a 
glory, like that of the sun, behind the veil of 
His humanity. He was on one occasion instantly 
transfigured so that His face shone as the sun, and 
His raiment was white as the light, and no human 
eyes could look on His glory. 

V. But why should He, if true God, decline 
the homage of men, saying to the young man who 
addressed Him as *' good Master," *' Why callest 
thou me good? there is none good but one; that 
is God?" This seems the more perplexing since 



252 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

He allowed disciples to hold Him by the feet and 
worship Him, as well as to address to Him the 
most unmistakable words of homage. 

We must consider that Christ's true God- 
head was not understood by the common multi- 
tude, who saw in Him simply a remarkable man. 
To receive such homage as belongs only to God, 
from one who regarded Him as only a man, would 
be to encourage virtual idolatry. 

The good caliph, Haroun Alraschid, was wont 
at night to go in citizen's dress, disguised, through 
the streets of Bagdad, in order to learn accu- 
rately what wants among his subjects needed to 
be relieved, and what woes redressed. And the 
Emperor Joseph H., of Germany, went incognito 
on extensive tours through Hungary, Bohemia, 
France, Spain, Holland — his true self not being 
suspected. It is very plain that for these rulers,while 
in disguise, their true character unrecognized, to 
accept from a citizen-subject any homage or obe- 
dience, due only to the caliph or king, would be 
to encourage treason ! The fact that the person 
in disguise was the sovereign, could not change the 
disloyalty of the act while the subject did not 
know him as such. 

If on such occasions, officers of state had to 
the disguised king breathed state secrets, they 
would have been arraigned for treason; although 
the king had the right to receive the communica- 
tion, the officer had no right to communicate to 
one whom he did not know to be the king. If 
Joseph II, while hearing such a traitor speak, had 
said, "Why do you breathe this in my ear? none 
should hear this but your sovereign," we should 
see no inconsistency. 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 253 

It was part of Christ*s humiliation that while 
in disguise, he should not accept unintelligent 
homage. To those who saw his true self — whose 
eyes pierced the veil of his humanity, he never 
said, "Why callest thou me good?" etc., but, with 
the calmness of the divine majesty, he permitted 
Peter to say, *'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God;" and then declared that, upon that 
confession of his divine Messiahship, he would, 
as on a rock, build his church, against which the 
gates of Hell shall not prevail! 

We repeat that we are not concerned with the 
mode of the divine existence or the union of two 
natures in one person. The question is, were 
there marks of the true man and the true God, 
apparent in Christ? if so, is not his own solution 
the rational one? And, without abandoning scien- 
tific calmness and candor, we have only to lay 
aside all bias of prejudice to see that here is the 
only perfect solvent, leaving behind it no residuum 
of difficulty. 

VI. There is a subtle argument deftly used 
by such as Strauss and Renan, against the super- 
natural element in Christ Jesus, which may be 
easily seen to be sophistical and fallacious. It is 
said that, if Jesus were indeed the son of God, 
there would be about his whole character and life, 
as well as his words and works, a plain supernat- 
ural aspect; that the very naturalness of the 
whole story shews the work of man's hand. It 
is all just as a good and great man would be like- 
ly to be and do, but not on a scale befitting the 
God-man. If God really came down to dwell 
among men why did not the very light of his eye, 
his form and feature, his very tread, proclaim the 



254 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

divine Creator, and Lord? But all this life is in- 
tensely human. 

This very fact and feature of Christ's life and 
its record, afford a grand argument, for the truth 
of the gospels. Had impostors been at work, 
fabricating a story of God manifest in the flesh, 
to impose on human credulity, we should have 
had no such simple, natural portrait. The infant 
Saviour would have been represented as, from 
birth, a perfect prodigy of unnatural and super- 
natural wisdom and power. Whenever the hu- 
man mind has tried to construct a superhuman 
childhood, there have been extravagance and ex- 
aggeration; as in the myth of Hercules, who, 
while yet an infant in the cradle strangled two 
huge serpents with his tiny hands. And in those 
apocryphal gospels, which pretend to supply the 
defects of the true narratives, the years of our 
Saviour's infancy and boyhood are crowded with 
marvels and miracles. Dumb beasts and even 
dumb idols bow in adoration before the child, as 
he is borne down to Egypt to escape the sword 
of Herod, and trees bend to do him homage; 
and, while yet a boy, less than seven years old, 
he amuses his play-fellows by transforming balls 
of clay into flying birds, bids the running stream 
become dry, changes his companions into goats, 
works all manner of miracles through the magical 
power of the bed on which he slept, the towels 
which he used, and even the water in which he 
was washed! now using his divine energy to ex- 
cite the curiosity, and now to arouse the fears, of 
his playmates. 

When the inspired evangelists draw the por- 
trait of the infant Saviour, we have a truly human 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 255 

child, born indeed of a virgin, but increasing in 
wisdom and stature, like other children, accord- 
ing to the laws of human growth; at twelve years 
of age, in the temple, hearing the Jewish doctors 
and asking them questions, and surprising them 
by his understanding and answers. ''There is 
nothing premature, forced or unbecoming his age, 
and yet a degree of wisdom and an intensity of 
interest in religion, which rises far above a purely 
human youth. "* What was it that restrained the 
evangelists from adding to the portrait of the 
God-man, features obviously fanciful and ideal. 

We have only to suppose that God's own son 
did take upon him not only the form, but the na- 
ture, of man, and did live purposely as far as 
possible on the level of humanity, that he might 
shew man how to live; and nothing can be more 
beautifully natural, than the recorded life of 
Christ. We can see how there came to be that 
rare blending of the high and humble, the sub- 
lime and simple, the divine and human, which 
marks this portrait in the gospels only. Had 
men invented this history they would have pre- 
sented us with the human aspect or with the di- 
vine, alone; or, if the union of the two were 
attempted, we should have "a mass of clumsy 
exaggerations'' or absurd contradictions. 

Concede that the evangelists had the reality 
before them, and everything appears natural and 
consistent. Does it, therefore, follow that with- 
out the reality before them they could be thus 
natural and consistent? Reason may approve many 
things which it cannot prove; that which, when 



* Schaff, "Person of Christ.'* 



256 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

presented before us, may commend itself as per- 
fectly reasonable and consistent, we might have 
been unable to devise or discover. A problem 
that perplexes us for years may have a solution so 
simple that, when known, it seems no problem at 
all; but that is a child's way of judging. What no 
man could invent may, when God unfolds it, seem 
eminently simple and natural. It is therefore a 
fallacy to argue that, because these gospel narra- 
tives are so natural, therefore they are fabrications 
of man! For thousands of years mankind has 
been working at, but never working out, this prob- 
lem — trying to invent a satisfactory incarnation, 
to get God manifest in the flesh. The Greek, Ro- 
man and Hindu mythologies are full of these 
attempts; but men even among those very pagans 
say these must be myths; "they are unnatural, 
contradictory, inconsistent." At last there is a 
true incarnation, and now the wise owls of modern 
scepticism squint and wink at the God-man and 
say, ''All this is so simple and natural that it must 
be a myth." Truly, the men of this generation 
are hard to suit; pipe for them a joyful strain and 
''they will not dance;" play a mournful melody 
and they will not "lament." If an incarnation is 
unnatural, it is mythical; if natural, it is mythical. 
God solves the problem over which the race has 
been studying for four thousand years, and the 
solution seems so simple that the wise men deny 
that there was any problem, after all. 

Yet in sceptical essays it is a favorite argu- 
ment against the Bible doctrine of vicarious sac- 
rifice for sin, that there is nothing in it that needed 
the divine mind to frame it. It is simply an in- 
nocent man suffering for the guilty, and so illus- 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 257 

trating the inviolability of law and the grandeur 
of Voluntary self-sacrifice. 

Suppose this v/ere all the deep meaning there 
is in the death of Christ. How happens it that 
all the pagan attempts to devise a way by which 
the guilty soul might escape, and yet divine jus- 
tice be satisfied, have been confessed failures! 
Men have planned to save the sinner, while the 
plan has not saved God from complicity and com- 
promise with sin; or they have planned a salva- 
tion from penalty without a salvation from guilt. 
God tells us how all desirable ends may be com- 
passed. Justice and mercy may be harmonized, 
as the cherubim on the ark, though looking in 
opposite directions, faced each other; and the sin- 
ner is saved from the punishment of his sin, and, 
better still, from sin itself. 

It is both absurd and dishonest to say that, 
because the gospel scheme of salvation is so sim- 
ple and satisfactory, it bears traces only of a hu- 
man hand. As well say that because the sun*s ray 
brings us at once light, heat and life — ^just what 
earth needs, and all in one sunbeam — the sun is 
a human invention; that the problem is so simple 
in solution that it bears no marks of a divine 
mind. 

God is always simple, even amid the most com- 
plex mystery. It is man ''who darkens counsel 
by words without knowledge;'* who cumbers his 
words with affectation of learning and logic, and 
his works with pompous pretension. Only the 
grandest of men learn the divine art of artless- 
ness — of perfect naturalness and simplicity. 

VIL At thispoint,the external and internal evi- 
dences of Christianity touch so closely that it be- 



258 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

comes notonly contactjbut almost coincidence. In a 
previous chapter the proof of miracles was consid- 
ered; but there is a moral argument which may 
be drawn from the miracles of Christ. The wit- 
ness which miracles furnish must largely hinge 
upon their character. If they are mere displays of 
power, gratifying the popular greed for novelty, 
appealing to curiosity, serving mainly to supply 
stimulus for those who, like the ** Athenians, spend 
their time in nothing else but either to tell or to 
hear some new thing," the whole character of the 
miracle-worker is degraded by his pandering 
to this insatiate appetite for what is new and 
strange. 

If the Son of God should to-day, for the first 
time, appear on earth in human form, with signs 
and wonders as the proof of the divinity that veils 
itself in His humanity, we should look for signs 
such as become so august a person. Mere dis- 
plays of power, such as descend to a level with 
the trivial tricks of a juggler, however they might 
puzzle us to explain, would not impress us as 
worthy of the Lord of all. It was said of Her- 
cules, god of physical force, that "whatever he 
did— whether he stood or walked or sat or fought — 
he conquered." That fine conception has in it an 
artistic finish as exquisite as the touch of a mas- 
ter sculptor, like Praxiteles; it sugg^ests that a 
true god will always carry the air and mien of a 
god. With or without his crown and scepter, 
robed in glory or clothed in sackcloth, awake or 
asleep, speaking or silent, in work or war or rest, 
he will still be divine. And if Christ were the 
God-man, everything He did must have been con- 
sistent with such a character. 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 259 

Now, look at His miracles. When men 
crowded about Him, asking for a sign, pretending 
that they desired Him to work wonders to con- 
vince them of His divine mission, He cahnly but 
firmly refused to degrade divine power to the low 
level of human curiosity. He would not harness 
the fiery steeds of Omnipotence, which roll the 
very suns through space, to the petty chariots of 
a race-course, to make dull eyes stare with idiotic 
amazement. 

What signs did He furnish, to satisfy the hon- 
est heart that would find the God in the man Christ 
Jesus? "The blind receive their sight, the lame 
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; 
the dead are raised up." (Matt. xi:6.) Not 
mere works of power, but works of love, attest- 
ing indeed divine authority, but revealing also 
divine sympathy; such works as a Father would 
be likely to use to reveal to His estranged and 
erring children His Fatherhood. When Jesus 
Christ undertook to show to men the sealed cre- 
dentials of His mission as the Messiah, in what 
sublime characters they were written! They had 
about them the handwriting of God; they shone 
with a light and luster like that of suns and stars. 
But as we look closer, they seem to be written also 
in blood and tears. There is in these displays of 
divine power a divine tenderness and gentle- 
ness more impressive than the miraculous ele- 
ment itself; they are moral miracles, and the 
purest and most loving nature most feels their 
force. Christ might have spent the three years 
of His public ministry tearing up sycamine and 
cedar trees by the roots and hurling them into the 
sea, by a word; commanding mountains like Her- 



260 Many infallible proofs. 

mon to be removed from their place; causing the 
sun to veil his shining face, and then uncover it 
at his bidding; making the sea to raise itself up, 
and stand like a column. These would have been 
grand displays of the power and authority of God, 
but they would not have unfolded the divine love 
and sympathy. What did He do? He wrought 
such wondrous works as showed men, in all con- 
ceivable circumstances of human want and woe, 
a divine readiness to give help and hope. 

Behold the divine Christ come down from the 
mount, where he had spoken that imperial sermon 
of our holy religion ; and what was His first work, 
proving and approving His right to teach with 
authority, and not as the scribes, who only referred 
men to a higher authority? Among the multi- 
tudes that followed Him, there came a leper and 
worshiped Him, saying, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou 
canst make me clean. " 

"And Jesus put forth his hand and touched 
him, saying, T will! be thou clean!' and imme- 
diately his leprosy was cleansed!" 

Here was divine power indeed, so grandly ex- 
ercised that we are reminded of Him who, in the 
profound gloom of primeval darkness, said, "Let 
light be! and light was!" who "spake and it was 
done; who commanded and it stood fast." But, 
least of all, was this a word of power: it was a 
touch of Love! A leper was a loathsome wretch 
— a living corpse, an exile from human society, 
whose presence was uncleanness, and whose touch 
was contamination. Leprosy was regarded by a 
Jew as the awful incarnation of sin, its power and 
its penalty— a living, breathing, walking parable 
of death and judgment. A leper wore his lep- 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 261 

rous robes that even his dress might distinguish 
him: and, lest he might cume into actual contact 
with humanity, he went everywhere crying, "un- 
clean! unclean!" 

Observe the pathos of that phrase, *' touched 
him." Christ's word was enough, even at a dis- 
tance! but that poor leper had been wont to have 
human beings shrink from him and bid him stand 
afar off. It may have been many years since he 
had felt the sympathetic touch of a hand, un- 
cursed by this scourge of God! and therefore the 
man of sorrows ''put forth his hand and touched 
him." He wished to show that leper that, back 
of the divine power that healed, was a divine 
Love. That touch is the key to Christ's miracles: 
they told of a throbbing heart, that combined 
the unspeakable strength and tenderness of a 
father's and mother's devotion. 

On one of the battle fields of the late war, a 
young soldier was wounded so badly that no hu- 
man skill could assure recovery. He grew rapidly 
worse, and in his delirium called piteously for his 
mother. The gentle surgeon, at the hospital, 
telegraphed her at once, and she arrived at mid- 
night. He met her at the entrance of the ward, 
and restrained her impatient feet: ''Madam, your 
son hangs between life and death; a moment of 
excitement, and there may be no hope. You 
must not see him now." 

For three long hours she waited outside the 
ward, near enough to see her darling boy, though 
dimly, and catch with the quickness of a mother's 
ear, each groan of pain. At last she laid hold of 
the surgeon's arm: "Doctor, I shall die if I stay 
here Let me go in and sit beside him. I will 



262 



MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 



not Speak : only let me do what the nurse is doing, 
soothe his brow and smooth his pillow." The 
nurse was called, and the mother took her place 
by the cot, once more enjoined by the surgeon to 
do nothing by which she might be recognized. 
She sat in silence — the face of the dying soldier 
turned to the wall. He groaned feebly. She, to 
quiet him, laid her hand on his hot forehead. In- 
stantly he turned himself about, and said, ''Nurse, 
how like my mother's hand!'* Even to that de- 
lirous lad, there was that, in a mother's touch, 
which no stranger could counterfeit. And so in that 
touch of Christ, upon that loathsome leper, there 
is revealed all the Fatherhood of God! That was 
like the Father's hand, it was the Father's hand! 

We lay no undue stress upon the moral force 
of Christ's miracles! To overlook this, is to fail 
to see the most important and powerful feature of 
the divine manifestation in Christ; and to fail to 
feel the weight of that grand logic which speaks to 
the hearts of men! In proportion as the human 
nature approaches the divine, it responds sympa- 
thetically to human sorrow and suffering. When 
God came down to men, the most touching proof 
he gave of his presence was found in the tender- 
ness of his ministry to human want and woe. And 
even his works of power were most remarkable 
for their exhibitions of a divine heart throbbing 
through a divine hand! 

Did the Star in the East guide the magi to the 
manger where He lay? The whole Bible — the 
book of the ages, is but the Star to shine for him 
and guide to him; the light in the deep darkness 
to move across the heavens, and over his cradle 
to rest, then to fade into a paler glory, before 



MYSTERY OF THE GOD-MAN. 263 

the day-dawn. The whole Scripture testifies to 
Christ, leads to Christ, rests in Christ, and fades 
before Christ as before a superb splendor — a 
greater glory obscuring the less. But that star 
guided only the magi — and them only for a sea- 
son — this Word is the star that waits on Him, and 
will never cease to burn or shine as the guide to 
seeking souls, till the last of those who look anx- 
iously for a redeemer shall find the place of his 
cross and empty tomb! 

The question which Pilate asked, each of us 
is compelled to answer: *'What shall I do with 
Jesus?" No formal disclaiming of responsibility 
can wash our hands clean of responsibility. If 
Jesus is the Christ, the anointed of God, the 
Saviour of men, he that despises or rejects him 
crucifies him afresh. The Jews took the respon- 
sibility from which Pilate shrank, and said "His 
blood be on us and on our children. " What a 
prophecy lay in that awful prayer. For eighteen 
hundred years his blood has been upon them and 
their children. The fire, the sword, the pelting 
hail of human hate, the scourge of hostile law 
and popular scorn, have pursued them everywhere 
from pole to pole and from the rising to the set- 
ting sun. 

The question "What think ye of Christ?'* even 
scepticism finds it equally hard to evade or to an- 
swer. Even could we explain miracles by some 
ingenious natural theory, the greatest miracle of 
all is the person of Christ. If he were a mere 
man, we know not how to account for his words 
or works; his relation to the Hebrew Scriptures 
and his relation to the Christian church. If he 
were the God-man, all is easily explained, but 



264 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

such an admission must be fatal to the whole fab- 
ric of scepticism. On the one hand the sceptic 
cannot explain Christ, on the other he cannot de- 
fend himself. For if Christ be more than man, 
to reject his words, and rebel against his authori- 
ty must imply guilt and peril. 

The God-man ! The 'daysman betwixt us both, 
who can lay his hand upon us both,' because he 
is of us both ! The way of God to man — the way 
of man to God; the true Jacob's ladder between 
heaven and earth. God above it, to come down 
— man beneath it to go up! The God-man, in 
himself our pledge that as God in Christ became 
a partaker of the human nature, so man in Christ 
becomes a partaker of the divine nature. Born 
of a woman, made like unto us, that we might be 
born of God and be made like unto Him! The 
God-man is not only a mystery and a miracle, but 
a prophecy and a promise. He tells us what man 
shall be, when by faith in Jesus, he is for ever- 
more made like unto the Son of God. 

They used to say of Mozart, that he brought 
angels down; of Beethoven, that he lifted mor- 
tals up. Jesus Christ does both, and here lies 
the central mystery of the God-man, a mystery 
which is blessedly revealed to him who by faith 
has personal experience of his power to save! 



CHAPTER XII. 



CHRIST THE TEACHER FROM GOD. 

"Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher, come from God. — 
Jno. Ill: 2. 

John calls Jesus, the *'Word of God." What 
is a word? It is the invisible thought taking form: 
Wordsworth says, ''Language is the incarnation 
of thought. " Spoken words are sounds, articu- 
late and significant: sounds in which there is soul. 
Written words are visible signs of intelligence 
and intellect; thought has determined their exact 
form, order, relation. 

God is represented as pure Spirit, and cannot 
be known by sense. He would communicate 
with man, and so puts his thought and love in a 
visible form in Christ, who is therefore beautifully 
called the living 'Word of God.' As God does 
everything perfectly, we are justified in looking 
for such an expression of His mind and heart in 
his incarnate Son as shall excel all other revela- 
tions of himself. In Christ, as the Word of God, 
we may properly expect to find the clear and un- 
mistakable stamp of the divine mind. In his 
teaching there must be a divine authority, majes- 
ty, originality, spirituality, vitality, essential 
worth and practical power, such as no merely hu- 
man teaching could display. Let us candidly ap- 
ply the test. 



266 



MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 



Even the wisest and best of human teachers 
have dealt largely in such words as ''if and "per- 
haps;" have spoken with doubt and hesitation on 
great moral questions, reasoning that "it might be 
so," or, sometimes with deeper conviction, 
"it must be." But Christ, with an authority 
that in a mere man would be audacity, 
says, with unfaltering tongue, on the most per- 
plexing questions, "It is so!" Never once does 
He hesitate in unfolding the mystery of the divine 
being, the present life, the future state. To Nic- 
odemus he calmly but firmly declares the necessity 
of the new birth; of a character and a life built 
from the foundation on godly principles, and He 
does not even stop to answer the question, "How 
can these things be?" To the woman at the well. 
He speaks of the spirituality of God, and that all- 
pervading Presence which makes every spot a 
place where the soul of man may come near to 
Him. To the unbelieving Jews He affirms His 
equality and identity with God the Father, and His 
power to raise the dead and pronounce that judg- 
ment on human character and destiny, from which 
there is no appeal. He dares to challenge men 
to "search the Scriptures," and find them, from 
Moses to Malachi, witnessing to Him ; affirms that, 
in whatever disguise of law, prophecy or psalm, 
rite, ceremony or historic event, the careful reader 
may still see His features clearly revealed. And 
yet He was but thirty years old, and the Script- 
ures were fifteen hundred! He not only said 
"Moses wrote of me," but "your father Abraham 
saw my day, and was glad;" and when the as- 
tounded Jews replied, "Thou art not yet fifty 
years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" He, 



CHRIST THE TEACHER FROM GOD. 267 

with the calmness of divine certainty, said, "Ver- 
ily, verily I say unto you, before Abraham was, 
I am!" Mark the exact words — not ''I was, but 
"I am;" for the Eternal One knows no tenses; 
past and future are present to Him who is both 
without beginning and without end. At the sep- 
ulchre of Lazarus He said, "I am the resurrection 
and the life;" and when He says, ''Lazarus, come 
forth," it is as when, out of the sepulchre of eter- 
nal night, God bade light come forth! Even be- 
fore Pilate and Herod there is the same command- 
ing bearing, yet it is not the vanity of conceit ; it is 
the sublimity of conscious omnipotence volunta- 
rily held in suspense. *'My kingdom is not of 
this world;" *'Thou couldst have no power at all 
against me if it were not given thee from above;" 
''Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my 
Father, and he shall presently give me more than 
twelve legions of angels?" ** Hereafter shall ye see 
the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, 
and coming in the clouds of heaven!" Nay, even 
amid the anguish and agony of dying, He turns 
to the penitent thief, and with still unfaltering 
tongue — himself no longer having even a gar- 
ment to cover His person — promises him the in- 
heritance of eternal bliss: *'Verily, I say unto 
thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in para- 
dise. " 

L Authority appears to have been the first 
impression made, if not the last impression left, by 
Christ's teaching. Matthew completes his report 
of that ''Sermon on the Mount," which inaugu- 
rates Christ's public ministry, by adding these sig- 
nificant words: ''When Jesus had ended these say- 
ings, the people were astonished at His doctrine 



268 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

[/. e,, teaching]; for He taught them as one hav- 
ing authority, and not as the scribes. " The scribes 
were the transcribers of the law; the pen in their 
hands was the printing-press of those days for the 
multipHcation of copies of the blessed Word. 
Their necessary familiarity with the letter of the 
law — "Scriptures," literally so called — gave them 
a certain right to teach, but not with authority. 
They referred their hearers to the law; their lan- 
guage was, ''Thus saith the law." But Christ's 
habitual language was, *'I say unto you." He 
taught as a teacher having authority, original, 
ultimate, underived; as one who had himself made 
and could modify the law. He expounded the 
Scriptures not as a commentator, but as the au- 
thor. Hear his sermon on the mount! With what 
calm, firm hand he lifts from the law of God the 
huge mass of human tradition and interpretation 
which had covered and hidden it, as God would, 
by an earthquake, upheave some buried monu- 
ment, or with one breath, as by a tornado, brush 
away from it the sands of centuries! ► 

Lord Northwick brought from Italy a fine pict- 
ure of St. Gregory, by Annibale Carraci. To se- 
cure its safe delivery, he hired a mere dauber to 
paint over it, in body color, an imitation of some 
inferior artist. On exposing the canvas, his friends 
saw nothing but a rude and repulsive daub; but 
he took a sponge, and, as washed the colors from 
the surface, the masterpiece was gradually revealed 
to enraptured eyes. Somewhat so, carnalism and 
literalism had during centuries glossed over the 
holy Word, till what scribes and Pharisees taught 
men to revere as God's law was largely the tradi- 
tions and commandments of men. And, with the 



CHRIST THE TEACHER FROM GOD. 269 

calmness of divine authority, Jesus boldly wipes 
away these glosses of false comment and perver- 
sion, and makes the law to be seen once more in 
its true spirit and intent. *'Ye have heard that it 
hath been said by them of old time" — that is the 
human daub; ''but I say unto you" — that is the 
divine original! 

This authority lifts Christ above all other 
teachers. Even the great Greek philosophers dis- 
claimed all original right to teach. When Leon, 
charmed with the silver tongue of Pythagoras, 
asked him wherein lay his highest excellence, the 
great teacher could only reply, "I am in nothing 
a master, but only cpi\oaoq)0^'' — a lover of wisdom ; 
and hence came the word "philosopher. " An old 
legend tells how there came to be seven sages in 
Greece. The priestess of Apollo had awarded a 
golden tripod to the wisest of the Greeks. It was 
sent to Bias, who said, "Thales is wiser;" and so 
it was sent to Thales, and passed through the 
hands of the seven, each claiming that the other 
was wiser than he, till, simply because no master 
could be found to claim it, it was sent back to 
Apollo's temple. God's golden tripod waited four 
thousand years for one to claim and hold it; none 
of the wisest ever dared to assume the right to 
teach with underived authority, until He came 
"who was found worthy to open the Book" of God 
and "loose the seven seals." 

If human teachers wield influence, their teach- 
ing must commend itself and command attention; 
if it has not the authority of truth, they can add 
to it no authority. Even prophets could only de- 
clare, "Thus saith the Lord." But Christ spake 
as never man spake — "I am the truth." 



270 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Such authority could not exist without inde- 
pendence. The sneer of enemies expressed the 
fact: "Master, thou teachest the way of God in 
truth; neither carest thou for any man: for thou 
regardest not the person of men." No bait of 
applause could turn Him aside, nor pelting hail 
of human hate drive Him into a politic silence. 
Burke said to the electors of Bristol: " I conformed 
to the instructions of nature and truth. I main- 
tained your interests against your convictions!" 
But even such fidelity was but a feeble reflection 
of that absolute candor that made the name of 
Jesus the synonym of loyalty to right and truth. 
To the reluctant and the willing ear alike, whether 
met by fervent love or by fierce hate, He, with 
unfaltering tongue, told the truth. 

With what audacious positiveness He grasps 
the grandest themes, which even the foremost of 
philosophers have touched but hesitatingly and 
tremblingly. Plato thought the soul must be im- 
mortal, but he spoke not as one who knew. 
Cicero said, *'There is, I know not how, in the 
minds of men a certain presage, as it were, of a 
future existence; and this takes deepest root and 
is most discoverable in the greatest geniuses and 
most exalted souls. " This was as far as mere hu- 
man teaching ever got. But not so speaks the 
Bible. Job, 1500 B. C, could say, *'I know that 
my Redeemer liveth," Paul could say, ''We know 
that of our earthly house of this tabernacle were 
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
Life and immortality were brought to light by 
Him who, on the most delicate, difficult and per- 
plexing questions, spake with authority, and who 



CHRIST THE TEACHER FROM GOD. 271 

gathered up in one bold affirmation the substance 
of all Bible-teaching on the immortality of the 
soul: **He that believeth in me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die. '* Such boldness and 
calmness of utterance, on the most difficult and 
doubtful questions, could mark but one of two or- 
ders of mind — either a mind seized with an insane 
fanaticism, or a mind inspired by the certainties 
of conscious knowledge. Christ was certainly 
neither a fool nor a fanatic. There are about Him 
the proportions of a giant, and yet the perfection 
of symmetry, and the firm and fearless tread of 
conscious power! 

Truly, ** never man spake like this man!" An 
impostor he could not be; for whence came such 
a life? It is, on the loftiest scale, pure, noble, 
heroic! — the one peak that soars to the stars and 
defies the approach even of an impure atmos- 
phere! A fanatic or enthusiast he could not be; 
for his wisdom, self-poise, intellectual and moral 
perfection, are inconsistent with a lack of balance! 
The firmness of his tread, the weight of his 
words, the justness of his decisions, the clearness 
of his judgment, the profoundness of his ethics, 
the faultless beauty of his life, leave no room for 
doubt that he could neither deceive nor be de- 
ceived. 

II. StiblUnity. Christ can be accounted for 
as a teacher on no merely human theory. The 
Jews had scores of intelligent teachers, such as 
the scribes, rabbi, doctors of the law, Pharisees, 
learned members of the Sanhedrim; but none of 
them taught like Christ. To prevent errors in 
copying the Scriptures, or intentional additions 



272 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and corruptions in the sacred text, the Masorites 

counted and recorded the words and letters, nay, 
even the points and accents, and noted Hterally 
every jot and tittle. So minute was the accuracy 
insured, that the verses of each book and of each 
section were numbered and recorded. 

The interpretations of scripture, and the rules 
and maxims of these teachers, had become sim- 
ilarly minute and trivial. They worshiped the 
letter and forgot the spirit; they taught a hollow, 
shallow, heartless, lifeless creed, cumbered with 
cerements of technical trifles and empty forms. 
Nothing is more surprising than the puerile ab- 
surdities over which the various schools of rabbi 
quarrelled. Think of writing learned treatises on 
this question: **]f a man should be born with two 
heads, on which forehead must he wear the phy- 
lactery?" The school of Shammai taught that 
an egg laid on a festival day could be eaten, while 
the school of Hillel remonstrated against such a 
breach of propriety; and the Pharisees had long 
and learned controversies over such unimportant 
questions as, whether a stream, made by pour- 
ing water from a clean into an unclean vessel, is 
itself technically clean or unclean, and whether 
touching the holy Scriptures could make the hands 
unclean, in the Levitical sense. We need not 
marvel, therefore, at the petty exclusiyeness which 
forbade a Jew to shew an uncircumcised traveler 
his lost way, or point him to a spring where he 
might quench his thirst; nor at the hair-splitting 
nicety which discriminated between swearing by 
the temple, and by the gold of the temple — the 
altar, and the gift upon it. 

The foremost religious teachers of that day 



CHRIST THE TEACHER FROM GOD. 273 

descended to what was puerile and trivial. Be- 
lieving the prophetic spirit withdrawn, they tried 
to make up for its absence by a system of petty 
rules, tithing herbs and washing cups, and for- 
getting justice and love and purity of heart. In 
place of a morality, based on love of the right, 
they devised the most ''frivolous casuistry ever 
known," loaded men's memories and consciences 
with countless rules so trifling that they rival the 
paltry regulations of the Koran; and then left 
the grandest duties to relax their hold on the 
human heart, by putting these trifles in their 
place. 

In what school did Christ learn to teach on a 
scale of such grandeur, majesty, dignity and au- 
thority? Who revealed to this obscure Nazarene 
who died at thirty-three, who had no scholastic 
training, and at whose ignorance of letters his 
enemies laughed — who taught him to insist upon 
great vital truths and grand first principles, that 
lifted him infinitely above the superficial trifles, 
over which the whole Jewish church wrangled? 

Christ, as a teacher, is a marvel. The whole 
Hebrew church was corrupted by the leaven of 
Pharisaic Ritualism and Sadducean Rationalism: 
the blind were leading the blind, and all alike 
falling into the ditch. Out of a village, so mean 
and low that to hail from it was a reproach, there 
comes this young man, trained neither in Greek 
schools as at Tarsus, nor in Hebrew schools as at 
the feet of Gamaliel; He comes forth from a car- 
penter's shop, where, like all other well-trained 
Hebrew youth, he had learned his father's trade, 
and his first public utterance is the most original 
and revolutionary address on practical morals 



274 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

which the world ever heard. It overturns the 
whole existing system of both Pagan and Hebrew 
ethics and religion. It plants a huge lever under- 
neath formalism, ritualism, rationalism, hypocrisy, 
immorality, insincerity; the aristocracy of blood, 
birth, wealth; all mere outside propriety and false 
distinctions of society, and announces that all are 
to be demolished — and if you ask where he is to 
rest his lever, where to find his ttov aroo — you see 
that he already has his fulcrum in the instincts of 
the human conscience, for wherever, then or now, 
might may lie, right is on his side, and must tri- 
umph. 

We are spell-bound before the magnitude 
and magnificence of his moral teaching, as we 
stand in awe before Mt. Blanc, pillaring the skies 
upon its white brow; yet we are as much amazed 
by the simplicity as by the sublimity of his teach- 
ing, and know not which seems most divine. 

Such wisdom the world waited four thousand 
years to hear; yet there is not a sign of pedantry. 
It requires no great learning to take his meaning, 
no trained mind or memory to classify and retain 
his precepts, no subtle logic to follow his argu- 
ment. There is no studied method, no tedious 
analysis, no wearisome division and sub-division. 
There is no aim at rhetoric: the thought, not the 
word, absorbs him; yet the word joist fits the 
thought. His illustrations suggest no great 
knowledge of history, philosophy, science — they 
are simply windows to let in light, and, that they 
may let in the more light, are not cumbered with 
elaborate framework, nor dimmed, as with stained 
glass. You do not see the window, but only find 
yourself in the light. His language is the Ian- 



CHRIST THE TEACHER FROM GOD. 275 

guage of the common folk, and there is not a 
taint of self-seeking in it all. Yet all the love 
and the wisdom of the ages have never been the 
golden setting to such a jewel as that simple dis- 
course enshrines. As Augustine says: **His life is 
lightning; his words are thunder!" 

To say that Christ's teaching was wise is to 
speak tamely: in Him are *hid all the treasures of 
wisdom and knowledge. '* How wide the range 
and scope of his teaching! What revelations of 
divine love and goodness! how broad his basis of 
morals! how profound and penetrating his insight 
into human conduct and character. Samuel John- 
son wrote as the epitaph of Oliver Goldsmith: 
"He left nothing that he did not touch, and 
touched nothing that he did not adorn!" But 
whatever Jesus touched he left gilded with glory, 
transfigured! And yet he adapted himself to the 
lowest and lowliest of his hearers; and, with the 
highest skill, gave his teaching the form best fitted 
to the place, time, object, occasion and audience. 
Yet though he condescended, he never descended ; 
never forgot his lofty character, his heavenly 
themes — instead of taking a lower level, He lifted 
his hearers to a higher one. 

Who could as lawfully hold God's golden tri- 
pod, as he who spanned the breadth, pierced the 
height, sounded the depth of infinite truth? 
While human teachers taught forms, he, the spirit; 
they, ceremonies, he, affections; they, conduct, he, 
character; they, details, he, duties; they, petty 
practices, he, grand principles! While they would 
frame a code so complete that the smallest matter 
should have its rule, as though man were a ma- 

*Col. ii:3. 



276 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

chine and must have an iron track to run on — He 
would fire the soul with that enthusiasm for God 
and goodness which makes duty delight, and 
service to God and man, the prompting of Love. 

And so the spirituality of Christ's teaching 
constitutes its sublimity. It lays stress first of 
all on what is within! not outward act, but in- 
ward motive. Down into not only the deep 
things of God but the deep things of man, his 
teaching went, into the secret soul where charac- 
ter is born and cradled; beyond the impure act, 
to the look, and the lust — beneath the blow to 
the hate — beneath the word profane to the irrev- 
erent heart, beyond the act of revenge to the vin- 
dictive feeling. 

With the calm confidence of the eagle, whose 
wings tire not with the longest, loftiest flight, and 
whose eye dares, undazzled, the noon-day sun, 
Christ spake of the grandest themes, dissected 
the very character of God, denied errors that had 
the authority of antiquity, and revealed truths 
hitherto wholly unknown. 

Christ so magnified and glorified the Scrip- 
tures, so interpreted aud unfolded their deep 
meaning, that his evolution of new principles 
compelled a revolution both in ideas and practices. 
Their righteousness must exceed even that of the 
acknowledged leaders of the people, it they would 
enter into his kingdom, for no correctness of out- 
ward life could compensate for the lack of inward 
love to God and man. Back of the white front 
of the Pharisee's life he shewed the dead men's 
bones of a lifeless creed, and the uncleanness of 
a heart full of corruption. Beneath the graceful 
mound of grass and flowers, the outward beauty 



CHRIST THE TEACHER FROM GOD. 277 

of alms and prayers, he shewed the grave where 
love lies buried, and righteousness is in decay. 

As the Lord of temple courts overthrew the 
tables of money changers, so he overturned the 
common notions of morals and piety, and brought 
men back to right laws of holy living: while as a 
faithful executor of the law he declares that to 
the last, least jot and tittle it shall be fulfilled, 
like a law-maker he assumes the right to modify 
and repeal the law itself, wherever, as with the 
ceremonial code, its object was temporary. 

"Where the word of a King is, there,'' said 
Solomon, ''is power!"* Here was the power of 
a King's Word: and it called the spirit of God 
back into the dead forms of the law, and then 
called the reanimated law from its sepulchre as 
Lazarus from the dead! And we can only remem- 
ber his own majestic words, as he was about to 
ascend to heaven: ''All power [e^ovaia) is given 
unto me in heaven and on earth !"f 

Judged even by a literary standard, where 
can such teaching elsewhere be found? such par- 
able and poem, such doctrine and discourse, such 
philosophy and theology, such simplicity and sub- 
limity? Here is the teaching both of the idea and 
the ideal, precept and practice. , He tells men 
how to live, and then he, by living, shews them 
how to live. No such ideal was ever imagined, 
no such heroism ever before became historic; in 
words and works alike no blemish is seen, no 
beauty is lacking. 

The sublimity of Christ's teachings has over- 
awed even those who dispute his divinity. As 
well look on the soaring summit of Chimborazo, 

*Eccles. viii: 4. fMatt. xxviii: 18. 



278 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and feel no emotion of sublimity, as to study his 
teaching without an impression of the moral sub- 
lime. Christ, in any aspect of his character, re- 
calls Goldsmith's famous lines: 

"As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm. 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 

III. Flexibility is another marked peculiarity 
in the teaching of Christ — its ready adaptation to 
every new phase of character or need of society. 
Systems of rules for conduct have often been 
rigid. Christ saw that conduct, even when con- 
formed to the right, is not always exactly the 
same. Human relations and conditions change, 
and so must human laws and human life; but 
principles never change; and hence, if Christ 
planted the great germ of holy principles in men, 
amid all changes of conditions and relations these 
unchangeable principles would beget right prac- 
tices. 

In this, Christ's teaching was wholly unique 
and peculiar. The age in which he lived was 
marked and marred by fearful forms of social 
sins and crimes; the whole body politic scarred 
by old wounds or festering leprosy. Polygamy, 
infanticide, legalized prostitution, capricious di- 
vorce, bloody and brutal games, death and pun- 
ishment by torture, unjust and cruel wars, caste, 
and slavery; these are some of the awful vices, 
that existed more or less distinctly as social usages 
during Christ's public life and ministry. Yet only 
one of them all does he name and directly re- 
buke and denounce. 

Did the great Teacher approve these immor- 



CHRIST THE TEACHER FROM GOD. 279 

alities and criminalities? The whole drift of his 
teaching, with the momentum of a moving glacier 
was grinding and ploughing the very structure of 
society into new form; but Christ, instead of at- 
tacking even gigantic wrongs, sought to put be- 
neath the whole fabric of society, one all conquer- 
ing, controlling love of law — and law of love. He 
knew that right principle to be the true lever of 
Archimedes, that could and would move the 
world; and this inflexible devotion to right and 
righteousness is yet strangely flexible, accommo- 
dating itself to every new condition of society. 

God uses a strange substance to confine and 
restrain the ocean's flood. It is sand, yet sand is 
peculiarly characterized by mobility: the mighty 
wave that dashes against and pulverizes the rock- 
cliff, moves the sand before it and as it recedes 
washes it back to its place; and so the sea-beach, 
always changing, never changes: that soft, mo- 
bile sand that yields to your footstep, and that a 
ripple moves, banks in and bounds the sea.* And 
so the holy principles with which Christ surrounds 
and restrains the individual and society, accom- 
modate themselves to all fluctuations of social 
condition, yet eternally abide and imperatively 
say: *'thus far, and no farther!" 

IV. Vitality, Christ's teaching had life-giv- 
ing power; it was vital and vitalizing. It hum- 
bled the heart, wrought deep desires after God 
and godliness, and transformed and transfigured 
human lives. And all other teaching is only pre- 
paratory to his — even the law is our schoolmaster 
to lead us to Christ: its precepts are but the sign- 
board at the crossway of duty and inclination, 

*Jerem. v: 22. 



280 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

truth and error, with the index finger pointing to 
him in whom all the glories of prophecy and his- 
tory center and meet. 

We are told of men "whose words shook the 
world;'' and we think of that humble monk who, 
in the opening of the sixteenth century, came 
from convent gates at Erfurth, and on the door of 
All-Saints* Church nailed up his theses — at the 
blow and echo of whose hammer the whole fabric 
of the Papacy shook and trembled. But what 
power in the words of Christ! Here is eloquence 
indeed. When men heard the silver-tongued Cic- 
ero they said, " How beautiful his speech ! " When 
men heard Demosthenes they said, "Let us go 
and fight Philip!'* When that great orator was 
asked what are the three requisites of power in 
the orator, he answered, not 'action, 'but ^ytivjiai^' — 
that which moves people to act; that which gives 
motion and stirs emotion. Here we have the di- 
vine Hivrjai<^ — the power to move and mould. 
Men heard Christ, and they not only said "never 
man spake like this man," but they said, like 
Joshua, "As for me and my house, we will serve 
the Lord,'' or, like Thomas, the doubter, "My 
Lord and my God!" 

Well might Mary Magdalene cry, with the 
mingled rapture of joy and tears, "Rabboni!" 
Rab was a Hebrew title, m^diWrng a great one ^3.nd 
applied in Jewish schools to acknowledged teach- 
ers and masters. Rabbi is more emphatic, "my 
master,'* and marks a higher dignity — the com- 
parative degree. But "Rabboni" was the super- 
lative, "My great Master," — most honorable of 
all, and applied to but seven persons, all of whom 
were pre-eminent in the rabbinical schools. In 



CHRIST THE TEACHER FROM GOD. 281 

that word, "Rabboni," Mary surrendered her very 
self to the authority and supremacy of her risen 
Lord. And blessed are they who, prostrate at 
his feet, join her in adoring, loving self-sur- 
render. 

To accept Christ as a divine teacher, as the in- 
carnate Word of God, solves the mystery of his 
person and his teaching. Indeed, the person can- 
not be separated from the teaching. Character 
and utterance must correspond. Theremin is 
right; ''eloquence is a virtue;'' the ultimate power 
to move and mould men by the wonderful gift of 
speech, is the power of a soul filled with knowl- 
edge, and fired with love of the truth. Those 
mighty floods of conviction which overwhelm 
others with similar conviction ; those mighty floods 
of emotion that sweep all obstacles before them 
and compel persuasion, imply the correspondingly 
great channel of a great mind and heart. The 
highest, grandest influence of eloquent speech is 
ihe influence of character, felt through speech; 
the power to convince and persuade is the power 
of being convinced and persuaded. A tongue that 
talks divinely must be taught by a heart that 
throbs divinely. Great things are spoken by great 
men; great thoughts are born of great minds; 
great love grows in great hearts; great teaching 
is the fruit of great natures. And, as Ruskin 
says, **they cannot be mimicked but by obedience; 
the breath of them is inspiration, because it is not 
only vocal but vital, and you can learn to speak 
as these men spoke only by becoming what these 
men were." 

Christ, the Hving Word of God, the Divine 
Teacher, invites all to accept and obey his teach- 



282 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

ing. He is a tender, fraternal, cherishing teacher, 
guarding the pupil of his charge as the pupil of 
his eye. The disciple is won not only by his wis- 
dom, but, infinitely more, by his love. 

When Plato came to Socrates to be taught 
wisdom, Socrates had a dream. He thought a 
pure dove, white as the snow, flew to his bosom 
and took refuge there, amid the soft, warm folds 
of his tunic. He thought he watched it from day 
to day, and saw its feathers grow and its wings 
develop, until it suddenly expanded its pinions 
and soared away till lost from sight among the 
clouds of heaven. And that dove, Socrates said, 
was Plato, taking refuge in his bosom only to give 
his own wings time to grow, and then, in the sub- 
lime flights of his pure and lofty philosophy, soar 
out of sight. 

Jesus takes his docile pupil, like a timid, trem- 
bling dove, to his own bosom, and there, hidden 
under nurturing and cherishing care, he learns to 
fly. Blessed, indeed, are they who learn of Him, 
who in Him find, like a wandering dove, a rest, 
and who, under His loving discipline, learn to 
soar and sing, like the lark winging its way toward 
the sky! 

**Jesus, lover of my soul, 

Let me to Thy bosom fly.'* 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE ORIGINALITY OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
•"Never man spake like this man." — Jno. vii: 46. 

Originality conspicuously marked Christ's 
teaching: it was novel, even in its repetition or 
resurrection of old truths; as he himself said, 
they were *'new and old," at the same time: old, 
because all truth is eternal; new, because the 
form, dress, illustrations and applications of truth 
were exactly suited to existing needs. A piece 
of spar, held in your hand, seems dull and 
opaque; but if you turn it till the light strikes it, 
at a certain angle, it shews lustre, beautiful and 
brilliant colors. This divine teacher took even 
the sterner and more forbidding attributes of God 
and turned them around, that the light might so 
strike them as to shew the glory and beauty. 

Who has not been repelled by the prevailing 
notions of divine wrath, common to all human 
religions ! Anger in God was only an ugly human 
passion, in a gigantic growth, and called by di- 
vine names. It meant revenge, backed by the 
power that none can resist, and armed with all 
the tortures that infinite wisdom can devise — it 
meant malice and malignity and hate — dwelling in 
the bosom of the deity. Men could understand 
divine wrath only by their experience of human 
wrath, which is vindictive and cruel. 



284 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Christ turned the dark attribute around, till it 
exhibited its glory, its lovely aspect. God's an- 
ger was seen to be, not a passion, but a principle 
— the eternal hatred of wrong, which corresponds 
with the eternal love of right, and w^hich is only 
another aspect of love. The magnetic needle 
swings on its delicate axis: it attracts at one end; 
it repels at the other: attracts at one end because 
it repels at the other. In the light of Christ's 
teaching, we see in the one attribute, Benevolence, 
a divine magnet, with two poles — love of holi- 
ness, hate of evil — both equally essential to its 
perfection; and so we learn to love God because 
He hates sin. His wrath is not an impetuous and 
changeable passion but an eternal and unchange- 
able principle, not malevolent but benevolent, not 
so much destructive as constructive, not retalia- 
tive but retributive, not vindictive but vindicative. 
It is one of the two equal pillars, on which rests 
the very arch of the divine government — a neces- 
sity to the very law and rule of God. Here is 
wrath, perfectly consistent with love; that hates 
not the soul, but the sin, and hates the sin for the 
soul's sake. '' Amat errantes^ odit errores. " God's 
wrath is but the certainty of ruin to the evil doer, 
who prostrates himself across God's track. Shall 
He move aside from the straight path of truth 
and right to spare the wilfully wicked? this would 
make God become a transgressor for the sake of 
saving the transgressor. 

Jesus taught us that wrath in God is the un- 
changeable perfection of holiness; and that holi- 
ness is love to the holy and wrath to the guilty. 
The same fire that warms and cheers, that refines 
and purifies, also burns and blasts, tortures and 



ORIGINALITY OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 285 

consumes; it all depends on our relation to the 
fire, whether it be our friend or our foe. We our- 
selves, by our sin, create the repulsion, with 
which we often find fault in God. 

"In Retsch's illustrations of Goethe's Faust, 
there is one plate, where angels are seen dropping 
roses down upon the demons who are contending 
for the soul of Faust. But every rose falls like 
molten metal, burning and blistering wherever it 
touches. God rains roses down, but our sinful 
hearts, meeting divine love with hate, and grace 
with stubborn, wilful disobedience, turn love into 
wrath; and what dropped from His hand, a flower 
beautiful and fragrant, becomes, when it touches 
the ungrateful and unloving soul, a live coal. 

All purely human notions of God are neces- 
sarily imperfect, and bear the stamp of their ori- 
gin. What is beyond our experience we can 
conceive only in accordance with our experience, 
i, e.y our notions must be qualified and limited by 
what we have seen and known. If we think of 
eternity, it is only time indefinitely prolonged. 
If we try to imagine pure spirit, we give it invol- 
untarily a bodily shape, form and features. We 
build our heaven out of earthly pleasures and 
elements. God himself reminds us of our infirm- 
ity, in framing conceptions of Him: *'Thou 
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as 
thyself." Our highest idea of God, independent 
of the help of the Bible, would be simply man on 
a grand scale. 

If Christ was a teacher come from God, there 
will be in his portrait of God, features not at all 
human. If he be, himself, God, and speak as one 
who knows what Godhood is, though he may 



286 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

have to use imperfect human terms, he will im- 
part superhuman ideas of God. And is it not so? 
When we think of eternity we do not drop the 
idea of succession, which belongs to time — we 
talk of a present, a past, a future. But Christ 
teaches that God's eternal existence has no past 
nor future. "Before Abraham was, I am." No 
man would talk in that way; man would say, 
'before Abraham was, I was;' but while man is, 
was and shall be, God can only say, ''/ am;'' 
for all the past and future are present to Him. 

Christ has introduced both new words and 
new ideas among men. *' Humanity is a word 
you look for in vain in Plato and Aristotle: the 
idea of mankind as one family, as the children of 
one God, is an idea of Christian growth; and the 
science of mankind and of the languages of man- 
kind without Christianity would never have sprung 
into existence." 

In the Greek, there is a word which means 
humility: {ra7iaivoq)poavyi]v) but this humility 
meant, with rare exceptions, meanness of spirit, 
the cringing, fawning spirit of the conscious 
slave. Christian humility is a virtue, a noble con- 
descension, which, in its very lowliness is lofty.* 

What new conceptions Christ gave us of the 
dignity and worth of the human soul! Man has 
speculated upon the relation of mind to matter, 
and could arrive at no certainty. The body might 
be like a harp, and the thoughts and feelings, sen- 
sations and perceptions, like the harmony of the 
harp. But how came the harmony? is the harp 
like the aeolian, that you set in your window, for 
the chance breeze to fan into music, or is there, 

^Trench on Words, 45, 46, 



ORIGINALITY OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 287 

aside from the instrument and the vibration of its 
chords, a master hand that sweeps the strings! 
Christ shewed men the human spirit, the true self, 
made in God's image; as Joseph Cook says, be- 
side the harp and the harmony, the harper, pre- 
siding at the harp and making the harmony. And 
he taught us that the harmony may be no longer 
heard and the harp itself be shattered, and yet 
the harper survive, exchanging the earthly harp 
for the heavenly, and with fingers trained to di- 
vine skill, evoking such melodies and harmonies 
as earth never hears or knows! 

Christ Jesus taught us a new philosophy of 
sorrow and suffering. 

The old pagan idea, which largely permeated 
and penetrated the Hebrew people, was that all 
suffering is the penalty of sin, and a judgment of 
God. Hence when any calamity came upon a 
man, a family, a nation, something must be done 
to appease the anger of a revengeful deity. Of- 
ferings were brought to the temple to buy God's 
favor, victims poured out blood in rivers to make 
reconciliation for sin; the first born of the body 
was sacrificed to please and placate the awful 
chastiser and avenger. 

Of course there is much suffering that is penal 
or punitive or retributive; the judgment of God 
upon evil doing, and the sign of His providential 
and moral government in the world. Terrible as 
these judgments are, they awaken profound grat- 
itude: for by them wickedness is both rebuked 
and checked; and "the inhabitants of the world 
learn righteousness. " What a fearful abode would 
this world be, if God had withdrawn from its 
active control; and left it to the unaided struggle 



288 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

between right and wrong, and to the might of a 
simply human arm! Thankful, indeed, ought we 
to be for God in history, although his presence 
on the throne be, at times, revealed in flames of 
fire such as consumed Sodom, or floods of water 
such as overwhelmed the old world, or signal 
wars such as destroyed Jerusalem, or such 
plagues and pestilences as the black death that 
swept millions from the earth. 

There is much suffering that is not judicial 
retribution but organic penalty; it comes by a 
natural law of cause and consequence: as for ex- 
ample, the bodily pains that follow neglect or 
violation of laws of health, or the pangs of re- 
morse that follow crime. 

But while this divine Teacher did not deny 
both these offices of suffering, he taught men a 
higher use of sorrow, viz., to discipline and de- 
velop the soul. '* Every branch in me that beareth 
not fruit, he taketh away: and every branch that 
beareth fruit he purgeth it that it may bring forth 
more fruit."* The husbandman comes with his 
knife to cut off dead branches and burn them — 
here is retributive judgment: he comes also to 
prune even the living and fruitful branches, that 
they may bear more fruit: surely that is not re- 
tributive suffering, it is rather corrective, educa- 
tive, to purify, beautify, glorify. 

Our views of the power and office of sorrow 
are very partial and imperfect. Jesus teaches 
that suffering is not always a penalty, either judi- 
cial or organic: it is designed to purge away our 
faults and follies, perfect our character and enlarge 
our capacity for service. This original and glo- 

*John, XV. 2. 



ORIGINALITY OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 289 

rious conception of the discipline of sorrow, is in 
various forms elaborated and illustrated in the 
New Testament. God has an "inheritance in the 
Saints," and He sets a high value upon it: and in 
order to complete and perfect that inheritance He 
subjects his saints to sorrow and suffering, as a 
proprietor plows up his land and pulls down his 
homestead that barrenness may give place to fer- 
tility, verdure and flowers, and the old house be 
reconstructed in a new and more beautiful form: 
he is simply improving his inheritance! 

Captain Lott used to say that a head-wind, 
which seems to hinder, helps the progress of the 
ocean steamer; it ''makes the furnaces draw." 
What a solace would God's sorrowing saints find 
in their very trials, could they but see in them the 
means of speeding their spiritual progress! 

Some virtues and graces depend on sorrow 
for their very life and growth. Patience is a flower 
that blooms only at night, and fully only at mid- 
night; it implies something to be patient about — 
something borne. The heavenly mind is acquired 
only by that process that refines away the worldly 
mind. We must be weaned from the temporal and 
perishable; the w^ne must be poured from vessel 
to vessel: otherwise it will settle on the lees, and 
take their taste. The assurance of hope comes 
only after hope's anchor, tested by the gale, has 
held us fast and firm to the rocks of promise. 
And how shall we get capacity to comfort oth- 
ers until we have ourselves been comforted of 
God? 

What trials the filthy rags undergo before they 
emerge in the pure, white paper! Torn to pieces, 
ground to pulp, bleached with chlorine and lime 



290 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and alum, washed again and again till the levi- 
gated stuff is white as flakes of snow, shaken to 
and fro till fibre crosses fibre and gives firmness to 
the fabric, ironed by hot cylinders till made smooth 
and even; how like the divine discipline by which 
our filth is cleansed; how like the tribulation out 
of which the host come up whose robes are washed 
white in the blood of the Lamb! 

How much the beauty of the pottery depends 
on furnace-fires! Even to the dull, dead colors, 
the heat gives character and quaHty; the very 
paint must be fused at white heat, and melt into 
the substance of the vase or vessel. Even then 
the pottery must not cool too quickly, and the 
bloodstone must burnish and polish the decorated 
surface till it is brilliant and radiant! 

Christ taught Paul to ''glory in tribulation," 
because ** it works patience, and patience experi- 
ence." And what is experience but the mark of 
the divine assayer of the precious metal, who, 
when he sees that all alloy is released and his own 
face is reflected in the purified gold, stamps it 
"Approved?" Yet how many of God's suffering 
saints cry, not like Paul/' All things work together 
for good," but like Jacob, "All things are against 
me," or, like Rachael, weep for their loved ones 
and "refuse to be comforted because they are not " 
Under Christ's tuition, sorrowing safnls learn to 
rejoice in affliction, like the disciple who thanked 
God for blinding the outer eye, that He might put 
telescopes to the eye of the soul, and bring celes- 
tial glories near. The "diamond of the first water'' 
is recognized by retaining its brilliancy under wa- 
ter where other precious stones lose their lustre. 
And our Lord teaches that a part of the office of 



ORIGINALITY OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 291 

affliction is to show how the radiance of the true 
disciple is undimmed beneath the deep waters of 
sorrow. Passing through the valley of tears, he 
makes it a valley of springs and streams. 

The greatest of poets only echoed the teach- 
ing of Christ when he wrote: 

"Sweet are the uses of adversity, 
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head." 

In the shipwreck of worldly joy, the disciple casts 
out the four anchors of faith and hope and love 
and patience, and, swinging from them, waits and 
wishes for the day! 

Is sorrow, then, the furnace-fire, 
The fuller's soap, the vale of tears? 

It still fulfils my deep desire- 
God's image in my soul appears! 

Christ both taught and lived a new law of self- 
sacrifice. And, to this day, the unselfish use of 
a love that accepts even death for the sake of the 
lost is, to all unrenewed souls, a mystery. Satan 
said of Job that he did not serve God for naught, 
and declared that a man will give all that he hath 
for his life. But Job's life proved that to be a lie ; 
he was moved by a love of holiness that no man 
can understand if it does not move him also! The 
men and women who, from Christian lands, go to 
China to convert pagans — who toil and suffer, dare 
poverty and defy death, without any motive of 
self-interest — are to the most intelligent Chinese 
simply a marvel. ''The Mandarins may compre- 
hend Confucius, but not Christ." 

There is a story of a poor sot, rejected by the 
maiden whom he loved, because he was a slave 
to drink. She one day saw him lying asleep in 



292 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

the gutter, and, averting her tearful eyes from the 
repulsive sight, dropped her white handkerchief 
over his bloated face, to hide his shame. He woke, 
drew the handkerchief away from his face, and 
saw her name wrought in its fabric. He rose 
from the heavy sleep, resolved yet to be worthy 
of a love that stooped so low in pity for his sin. 
And many a lost sinner has been first won to God 
by the thought of a divine love, so unlike the 
noblest human affection that it is bestowed most 
lavishly upon the least worthy. Christ taught 
this new law of love: "A new commandment I 
give unto you, that ye love one another as I have 
loved you." Love was not new, but such love 
was. It had been said by them of old time, 
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine en- 
emy.'' The love of men is prone to be selfish 
and exclusive. Thales, best and wisest of the 
Greeks, thanked God that he was "born a man, 
and not a brute'' — ''a Greek, and not a barbarian.'' 
Outside of Greece all were brutes and barbarians, 
to whom he owed no debt of love. Demosthenes' 
noble motto was, "Not father or mother, but dear 
native land.'' But this rose no higher than pat- 
riotism. Even the Jews, trained under a divine 
faith, had "no dealings with the Samaritans" — not 
so much as to show a lost traveler his way, or give 
a drink to the thirsty. Christ first taught man- 
kind a true philanthropy — the love of man, as 
man, wherever found. Until Christ came, this 
grand truth of the universal brotherhood of man 
was even more obscured and perverted than the 
universal Fatherhood of God. Schiller, and even 
Wordsworth, have suggested a contrast between 
the Pagan and the Christian faith, and hinted that, 



ORIGINALITY OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 29 3 

however divinity might be on the side of the re- 
Hgion of Jesus, the humanity rather appeared on 
the side of the old gods of Greece. We confess 
surprise at such a disparaging and unjust compar- 
ison. Christ and Christianity brought not only a 
new theology, but a new philanthropy. And 
"after that the kindness and philanthropy of God 
our Saviour toward man appeared, ''^ etc., for the 
first time, the world was taught to see in every 
human being a brother, and, as such, to love him. 
Christ adopted the old maxim, *'Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor," but gave that word, neighbor, a 
new and grand meaning. ''Who is my neighbor?'' 
Let the parable of the Good Samaritan answer. 
Not he who lives next door, my fellow-citizen and 
fellow-countryman, but whosoever is made of one 
blood with me, who shares my humanity, and, 
most of all, who, by poverty, misery, want or 
woe, is most in need of my gentle, generous 
offices. If, by chance, I pass that way, and even 
my enemy lies naked and wounded across my 
path, I am to go to him and bind up his wounds, 
put at his service my precious healing-oil and 
strengthening wine, and walk that he may ride, 
caring for him, and providing for his wants. Did 
Greece or Rome, even in their golden ages, under 
Pericles and Augustus, ever teach such doctrine, 
or exemplify such practice? See the old worn- 
out slave, and even the aged, helpless parent, 
turned out to die of starvation and neglect! See 
the captives taken in war glutting the savage thirst 
of the lion and leopard in the arena! Go through 
these two grandest empires of the ancient world, 

* Titus iii : 4. 



294 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

and look in vain for an asylum or hospital for the 
deformed, the diseased or the dying! And yet 
we are told that the pagan religions outshine the 
religion of Jesus in their teaching or practice of 
humanity and philanthropy! Christ has made all 
men neighbors, by the delicate and etherial bond 
of an unselfish sympathy; his disinterested benev- 
olence is like a telegraph-wire whose starting-point 
and battery were at Calvary, in the throbbing 
heart of Him who died with the unselfish prayer 
for his enemies, "Father, forgive them, for they 
know not what they do.'' That bond, reaching 
from the cross and round the world, establishes 
between all members of the human family a sym- 
pathetic communication, and makes all men neigh- 
bors. The heart of Christendom feels the pulse of 
the heart of Pagandom, and beats in responsive sym 
pathy. Faminepinches the human brotherhood in 
India,China and Persia,and ten thousand miles away 
are felt the sympathetic gnawings of hunger; and 
out through the arteries of commerce the Chris- 
tian heart pulses its life-blood. Ships hoist their 
sails, and trains blow their whistles, to bear food 
to perishing brethren! Knowing their spiritual 
famine, even while they do not fully realize it, we 
send to them the bread of life. Our missionaries 
are met with coldness and even persecution, die 
of fever, hunger, exposure, violence; anxl yet to 
the unthankful and the evil they continue to go, 
moved by a love like the perfect love, until in fifty 
years more than six hundred saintly men and 
women fall asleep in Jesus, and find a grave in In- 
dia alone! Can such love as that be found, such 
humanity, such philanthropy, among the ancient 
pagans? Did Greece or Rome ever send a mis- 



ORIGINALITY OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 295 

rionary to the outside barbarians? And yet Lon- 
don alone encircles the globe with her missionary 
bands! They cross the Sahara, and pierce the 
Dark Continent; they dare the Arctic snows and 
bergs ; they face the tigers in the jungles of India, 
and the cannibals of the southern seas. From the 
equator to the pole, and from sunrise to sunset, 
the missionaries London alone has sent out have 
borne and planted the cross, as a support for this 
telegraphic circuit of love which binds all men in 
one brotherhood. And while London is doing 
all this abroad, she builds within her own borders 
more than one hundred hospitals, asylums and 
houses of shelter for the victims of poverty, de- 
formity, disease and misfortune! 

O Schiller, O Wordsworth! poets you may be, 
but you are scarcely philosophers if you cannot 
see that Christ taught men a new commandment, 
and set them a new example, of love; a true phi- 
lanthropy, unselfish, catholic, impartial; not lim- 
ited by family circle, nor wider circle of state or 
church. Here is a benevolence of which the most 
ample almsgiving is but one expressson ; a benev- 
olence which means not an act or a feeling, but a 
spirit and law^ of life; that sends out angels of 
mercy on divinest errands to the ends of the earth; 
not to gather gold or gems to feed the greed of 
gain; not to learn facts for history or science, or 
frame theories for philosophy; not to find delica- 
cies and dainties for the palate; but to lift man- 
kind to a higher level for this world and the next; 
to break down the middle wall of partition be- 
tween man and man, till, by the simple force of 
love, no barrier be left, though it had been high 
as mountains or broad as seas; till there should 



296 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

be neither '*Jevv nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, 
bond or free, male or female, but all one in Christ 
Jesus " 

This love teaches us to find our "neighbor" not 
only in him who is most remote, but even in our 
enemy. Even the publicans and pagans love 
their friends, but we are taught to love those who 
hate us; to love what is unattractive and even re- 
pulsive, for the sake of making lovable, because 
love ennobles and elevates, blesses and saves! 



i 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

"Where the word of a King is, there is Power." — EcCL. 
VIII : 4. 

De Quincey has drawn a beautiful line of 
distinction between the "literature of knowledge 
and the literature of power." "What," he asks, 
"do you learn from Paradise Lost? Nothing at 
all. What do you learn from a cookery book? 
Something new, something you did not know be- 
fore, in every paragraph! But would you there- 
fore put the wretched cookery book on a higher 
level of estimation than the divine poem? What 
you owe to Milton is not any knowledge of which 
a million separate items are still but a million of 
advancing steps on the same earthly level; what 
you owe is power, that is, exercise and expansion 
to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the 
infinite, where every pulse and each separate in- 
flux is a step upward — a step ascending as upon 
Jacob's ladder, from earth to mysterious altitudes 
over the earth. All the steps of knowledge from 
the first to the last carry you farther on the same 
plane, but could never raise you one foot above 
your ancient level of earth; whereas the very first 
step in power is a flight, is an ascending into an- 
other element where earth is forgotten. !" 

Now in the teachings of Jesus, we have both 
the literature of knowledge and of power, and 



298 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

both of the highest order. There is such a thing 
as lustre without weight, even as there may be 
weight without lustre. Here we have both: the 
most glorious moral radiance with the weightiest 
moral dignity, worth, sublimity! 

Christ's teaching bears marks of Divine In- 
spiration. Here are ''thoughts that breathe and 
words that burn." These are living words, there 
is about them a vital breath and a celestial bright- 
ness; compared with them all literature is dead. 

How fragmentary are the works that survive 
the lapse of centuries! we have but a few relics, 
saved from the ruins of ancient letters. But 
Christ's words, recorded by a few unlettered men, 
according to his own prophecy do "not pass 
away;" they are thus far immortal. Kingdoms 
perish, thrones crumble, nations drop out of his- 
tory, but firmer than the eternal hills, Christ's 
words live, and they live simply because they 
cannot die; there is in them the undying spirit of 
God. 

The Word of Christ proves itself to be the 
Word of God by its living energy, and its pene- 
trating power. ''It is living and powerful, sharper 
than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the 
dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the 
joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the 
thoughts and intents of the heart." This is the 
language in which the Bible itself expresses the 
power of God's Word; and if Christ were the 
living word, his teaching must correspond. Mark 
the beauty of the figure. Here is a Damascus 
blade, skillfully shaped and sharpened, bright as 
a mirror, keen on both edges and burning at the 
point. Behold the Titanic warrior wield it, with 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 299 

a Strength and skill so terrible that it pierces 
through the very body of the foe, burying itself 
to the hilt, dividing the joints and cleaving to the 
marrow, and laying bare the very vitals. In such 
hands the sword becomes a living thing — the coat 
of mail can neither stay nor dull its edge; from 
the crest of the helmet to the skirt of the kilt, it 
is ripped asunder, and by the same blow the body 
of the victim is cleft in twain. 

Had the word of Christ any such power? Let 
the history of nearly two milleniums tell us. For 
eighteen centuries it has proved itself a living 
sword, cutting through all obstacles, piercing to 
the inmost soul, with convicting and converting 
power; cleaving through the hardest mail of big- 
otry, prejudice, superstition, self-righteousness; 
and revealing the secret thoughts. And all this 
the word of Christ is doing to-day. 

I. That peculiar power in Christ's words which 
we call ''Penetration^'' is well expressed by the 
symbol of the sword, keen-edged, sharp-pointed. 
His teaching somehow pierces to the depths of 
consciousness and conscience, and reads and re- 
veals the thoughts and the intents of the heart; 
so that there is no created being that is not 
searched by it. Christ's words shew that he knew ' 
by divine insight, ''what was in man." 

Have you never seen yourself revealed to 
yourself in the Word of God? the secret springs 
of your conduct exposed? What a revelation of 
human nature, of familiarity with the human 
heart! The sermon on the Mount dissects the 
very soul of man: it is both an exponent and an 
expositor of the secret life. 

The enigmas of human character and conduct 



300 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

find there a master solution. Note a few exam- 
ples. 

How moral philosophers have puzzled over 
the almsgiving of a selfish soul. Christ explains 
it by the love of applause. You marvel why the 
Pharisee parades his prayers, for you feel that 
secrecy and devoutness go together. Christ 
tells you it is prompted by the lust of notoriety; 
the prayers are to man not to God. You are 
perplexed because some, who are blind to their 
own faults see, with uncommon clearness, the 
faults of others. Christ tells you that the beam in 
the eye of one man makes him see a mote in his 
brother's. Hence the pharisee condemns osten- 
tation, the bigot denounces intolerance, the hyp- 
ocrite rebukes insincerity, and the backslider, in- 
consistency. Your simple soul is surprised 
because the faultfinder pecks at you in your 
very effort to please. Christ shews you that a 
heart, ill at ease with itself, vents its unrest in 
snapping and growling at others. 

You ask, how can the same man be lax in 
some things and severely rigid in others? Christ 
answers, that it is the effort of self-righteousness 
to make up for laxity one way, by severity an- 
other; as when one feasts six days and fasts the 
seventh, or compounds with his conscience for 
sensual sins by bodily penance; or cheats his 
neighbor all the week but would not black his 
boots on Sunday; or gives money away to atone 
for getting it unfairly! 

You are again perplexed to find enthusiasm 
and apathy in the same character — this divine 
teacher accounts for the strange mixture by insta- 
bility of character, a life of impulse instead of 
principle. 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 301 

Marvellous indeed was Christ's insight into 
human nature. With divine deHcacy, yet with 
divine certainty, he lays his hand upon the heart 
of the moralist who, boastful of his prim pro- 
priety, triumphantly asks *'what lack I yet?" 
and touches instantly the sensitive spot. *'Go sell 
that thou hast and give to the poor. " In that 
fair life there was a secret weakness — the greed 
of gain, and it corrupted all the rest. He, with- 
out hesitation, touched at once the hidden idol, 
and the fair life w^ithered into deformity. 

The penetration of Christ's words struck his 
most gifted foes dumb. Pharisees and Herodians 
forgot their hostility and conspired to catch him 
in his talk: ''Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cae- 
sar or not?'* "Render unto Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are 
God's." Then the Sadducees sought to entangle 
him in a question on the resurrection: but again 
his wisdom put them to silence. Then the Phar 
isees returned to the assault and cunningly tried 
to entrap him into giving some one command of 
God undue prominence. And when again he read 
their hearts and so majestically eluded their 
snare, from that day they ** dared ask him no more 
questions!" 

Fouque has a fable of a magic mirror, so won- 
derful that he who looked in it might read his own 
character, history and destiny. Goth and Moor, 
Frank and Hun came from far to see their past and 
future unveiled. 

Here is the true magic mirror — this keenest 
sword is also a polished blade: it not only cuts 
deep, but it reflects character. Nothing is more 
plain, in Christ's words, than an insight and a 



302 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

foresight, far beyond man. Here, as in the brook, 
is the inverted image, which shews how deep is 
our degradation — but it tells of our possible ele- 
vation and salvation — even as the stars are no 
deeper down in the reflection than they are high 
in the heaven. 

Go look in this mirror, see your own thoughts 
revealed, your concealed chains of ambition, ava- 
rice, appetite. Self-deception is without excuse; 
he who tries himself by Christ's standard of duty 
may learn himself — what he is and what he may 
be. 

Blessed indeed to the true man is a true in- 
sight into himself He can devoutly pray with 
Burns, 

"O wad some power the giftie gie us, 
To see oursels as others see us!" 

But what is it not worth to see ourselves as God 
sees us! 

Ah, blessed mirror of the Word, 
Thine image is not dim nor blurred. 
Looking in thee, myself I see 
As God's Omniscient Eye sees me! 

II. The adaptation of Christ's words to every 
want of every soul is, even more than their pene- 
tration, the secret of their power and the proof of 
their inspiration; indeed they pierce, not to 
wound, but to cure; not to hurt, but to heal. 
They are for all alike, the child, the man, the 
ignorant, the cultured, in all ages and climes, at 
all times of life. To the infant in the cradle, and 
to the aged, at the doors of the tomb, you whis- 
per the same precious words: they guide the 
doubting, solace the troubled, assure the timid, 
and encourage the penitent. The very blade that 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 303 

pierces so deep, bears on its point the balm of 
Gilead, and it is to carry the balm that it thrusts 
so deeply. It is half the cure to know the disease. 
And the divine teacher helps us to the knowledge 
of ourselves that we may feel our need and find our 
cure. He does not apply the soothing ointment 
until he has first cut out the fatal cancer; and he 
shews his skill just as much in the use of the 
blade as in the use of the balm. 

The convicted sinner and the afflicted saint 
alike testify to the adaptation of Christ's words. 
One keen-edged utterance strikes home to the 
heart, penetrates to the conscience, and makes it 
smart as though under the hot iron. Remorse so 
keen and cutting that it drives him to the verge 
of despair, fills the sinner with agony. His guilt 
seems beyond pardon. The sword has gone 
deep, the soul and spirit almost seem divided 
asunder. But had the truth been less penetrating, 
it would not have suited the sinner's case; any 
milder thrust would not have pierced the joints of 
his harness of hard habit and indifference. And 
when the deep wound heals under the balm of 
gracious promise, and the anguish of penitence 
gives way to the peace of faith, the sinner sees 
the adaptation of Christ's words. 

So too the sorrowing saint finds in them the 
very solace he needs. The sharp dart of afflic- 
tion seems to part the very soul in twain, but the 
sorrow goes no deeper than the solace. It is be- 
cause Christ's words penetrate so deep that they 
make the words of man seem so hollow and shal- 
low. Here only is the celestial branch which 
sweetens the bitter water of Marah. Christ's 
teaching suggests divine uses of sorrow. 



304 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

III. He set up no claim as a philosopher: 
yet where will any philosophy be found worthy 
to compare with his teachings? 

Among all the systems which gave rules for 
the conduct of life, two stand in the front rank, 
viz: Epicureanism and Stoicism. 

Epicurus sought to frarhe a scheme of morals 
with happiness as its end: and his conception of 
happiness was not a low one: it must be virtuous 
and enduring. Yet it was a mere passionless or 
impassive state after which he taught men to 
strive. The happiness of the gods, he said, is 
repose, they neither take nor give trouble, and 
have no care about our affairs. Auvd so the chief 
end of the wise man is to get to this state of apathy. 

Stoicism taught that the wise man must be 
self-contained, have all the elements of happiness 
w^ithin, and be indifferent to pleasure and pain, 
sickness or health, wealth or want; and as all ac- 
tions are from within, he may commit deception, 
suicide, or even murder, at a proper time and in a 
virtuous character. The virtuous stoic was like 
cold marble, proudly superior to pain and pleas- 
ure, smothering his own sorrows and repressing 
pity for the sorrows of others. 

Set beside these systems the pure teaching of 
Christ, which puts man's happiness in holiness, 
union with God by faith, hope, love^: puts in the 
place of self-indulgence for pleasure's sake, self- 
denial for the sake of humanity. It makes men 
neither passionless nor impassive, but teaches us to 
rule all impulses by reason and right, and to open 
hand and heart to every sufferer. Man's chief 
end is to love and serve God, and bless his fellow- 
man. The presiding law of all life is love. 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 305 

When philosophy has reference to God, it is 
theology. Can any system of human theology 
compare with the teaching of the Son of God? In 
most cases human systems are marred by grotesque 
absurdities and fanciful follies. 

Mohammedanism boasts 150,000,000 of ad- 
herents. It says sublimely, "There is one God;" 
but if you take away what it has borrowed from 
Judaism and from Jesus, what have you left? An 
absurd fatalism, which denies all moral freedom; 
one-sided views of God, all power, no love; a 
sensual paradise whose black-eyed houris and vo- 
luptuous pleasures make heaven only one vast 
harem ! 

There is Hindooism, hoary with age, having 
500,000,000 followers, offering the choice between 
all God and no God, pantheism or atheism; teach- 
ing transmigration of souls, and full of moral 
abominations. It is an insult to Christianity to 
talk of comparing the teaching of Jesus with Budd- 
hism or Brahminism. 

Pass all others by and stop a moment with that 
which leads all the rest by right of worth, viz: 
the system of Socrates and Plato. Here we find 
a Supreme God, Creator, Ruler, arranging and 
upholding the universe, fountain of all truth, beauty 
and goodness. First principles of morality are 
his laws, not to be broken with impunity; good- 
ness and truth are the end of true living. 

Socrates urged men, at risk of life, to be vir- 
tuous; lived himself in voluntary poverty, and 
died a martyr to his integrity. Yet even Socrates 
taught only doubtfully the immortality of souls, 
and with his last words ordered a cock to be sac- 
rificed to Esculapius; yes, even he sanctioned 



306 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

"some kinds of the most horrible licentiousness; 
he was only a philosophical reformer. " 

Beyond Socrates and Plato we need not go; 
for men of purer doctrine and life the pagan world 
has not produced. Yet Plato owned that what he 
and the Greeks knew of the Gods they learned from 
the Israelites; so that Socratism is only a scion 
grafted on Judaism. Rousseau confessed that 
"if Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ 
died like a God!" And just this we may say of 
their life and teaching: If Socrates lived and taught 
like a philosopher, Jesus lived and taught like a 
God! 

From all human systems we turn to the teach- 
ing of Jesus, and even the pure but partial reve- 
lations of the Old Testament appear, as John 
saw in Apocalyptic vision, a waning moon 
beneath that New Testament gospel which^crowned 
with twelve stars, is clothed magnificently with 
the sun — that orb of glory before which stars fade 
and even the moon grows dim. From all the long 
search of centuries we come to end, at the cross 
of Christ, our pilgrim path. We have found him 
who is the way, the truth and the life. We are 
willing to sit at his feet and learn of God — the one 
God, a Spirit, infinite, unchangeable, eternal, 
almighty, holy, good; his dwelling, immensity, his 
life-time, eternity. Here we learn of^nan, sinful, 
responsible, immortal; of the hereafter, with its 
sure reward and retribution. Here only do we 
learn of a way of salvation both from the penalty 
and power of sin. By faith in the God-man, we 
become one with God and fit for heaven. Here 
we are taught true humility, a charity that 
reaches its arms around even one's enemies, a self- 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 307 

sacrifice which is simply sublime; and to all this 
theory is added an example which, if possible, is 
grander than the theory. All this pure and per- 
fect teaching is illustrated by one single and sin- 
gular life; all these ideas of snow-white purity, 
magnanimous forgiveness and holy love, are made 
manifest in the flesh; the thought of the Divine 
Artist flashes forth in the colors of a living pan- 
orama, and we are challenged to make trial of the 
power of this teaching, whether it does not hide 
the life of man in God, and reveal the life of God 
in man. 

The teaching of Christ marks an era, an epoch 
in human history, which is like the flash of light 
upon the eternal night. Truths but faintly fore- 
shadowed, if at all, in the best of human systems, 
are here taught clearly and fully. Christ is the 
Sun; all that move about him become luminous. 
But withdraw him, and even the light is darkness. 

IV. Power, The actual practical power of 
Christ's teaching vindicates his claim to divine 
honors. 

I. It has satisfactorily solved the problems 
of the soul. All through human history there has 
run a dark thread of religious doubt. There arc 
certain absorbing questions over which the world 
has been working, like a school-boy over the puz- 
zling mysteries of mathematics; and these prob- 
lems every great system of philosophy or theol- 
ogy has tried to explain. These are no minor 
questions either; they touch life at vital points. 
What is God? What is man? — whence came he? — 
whither goes he? How did sin come to be, and 
how is it to be put away? How was the universe 
made? What is death, and what is after death? 



308 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

What answers have been given by even the 
best and purest schools of human thought? How 
unsatisfying — how absurd! Think of the shock- 
ing and monstrous errors into which mankind 
have been betrayed in seeking peace with one's 
self and with God! Idolatry, with human sacri- 
fice and consecrated sensuality; pantheism, athe- 
ism, materialism — every form of error in doctrine 
and evil in practice have been linked with the name 
of religion. 

Now turn to the Christ of God; has he 
thrown the light of heaven on these dark ques- 
tions? Think of that cross which is the central 
and focal point of history, toward which all lines 
converge from creation; from which all diverge 
to redemption completed in heaven. Look at 
Calvary, and in the speechless anguish of the 
Lamb of God behold every problem forever solved. 
Do you ask, **What is God?" Here you learn 
He is love — too just to redeem the sinner without 
a ransom; too pure to admit him to heaven with- 
out holiness; too good to leave him to certain 
ruin. Do you ask, ''What is man?" Look again 
at Calvary. Man must have been sinful, else why 
should the sinless One suffer in his stead? Man 
must have been immortal, for there would be 
no such sacrifice simply to save him from 
temporal woe. Man must be free and responsi- 
ble; otherwise, both guilt and faith would be im- 
possible. Do you ask, ''How came sin?" Read 
the answer in the shadow of that cross; for had 
not sin come through man, God would not have 
needed to become man in order to expiate it. 
The race, which in the first Adam died, in the sec- 
ond Adam may be made alive. Do you inquire, 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 309 

How is man to be reconciled to God? That 
cross answers: The God-man is both a sacrifice 
and example; if we appropriate by faith the 
merits of his death, and by obedience the merits 
of his life, both pardon and purity become ours. 

The divine Teacher brings the wisdom of God 
to solve the problems of the soul. Questions over 
which the brightest and best of men have vainly 
studied, one solemn hour of dying agony has fully 
and forever answered. Amid the darkness which 
might be felt, there is this one spot where light is 
to be found. The cry that rent in twain the tem- 
ple's vail opened to view the holy of holies, with 
its glory everlasting. The smile of peace which 
shone on his face when he said *' It is finished," 
and gave up the ghost, cleft the darkness of a 
world's despair with the ray of reconciliation, and 
to this day no soul needs walk in the gloom. To 
follow this gleam is to come into the light of life. 

2. A still more severe and decisive test of 
the power of Christ's teaching remains to be ap- 
plied. How does it actually affect human con- 
duct and character? Is it a reforming, transform- 
ing power in the soul and in society? Complete 
as a philosophy, it meets man's cravings; com- 
plete as a revelation, it solves man's problems; 
does it, complete as a vital force, regenerate hu- 
man life? Does it prove itself the truth of God 
by being the power of God? Paul declared that 
for this reason he was *'not ashamed of the gospel 
of Christ;" not ashamed to preach it as a chained 
prisoner at Rome, the center and focus of pagan 
culture, because it was ''the power of God unto 
salvation." His chains clanked as he preached it, 
but the chains fell from souls as he preached. 



310 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

Note his word, "power" — Svvajdi?; the gos- 
pel is the divine dynamic force in human history. 
Practical tests are far more severe than theoretical. 
Whatever may be said of Epicurus and his phi- 
losophy, his followers became, after a time, 
selfish and sensual; appetite became their idol. 
And the word ''epicure" is a sad w^itness of the 
low level of gluttony, intemperance and debauch- 
ery to which Epicureanism sank. 

The adherents of Stoicism were known as cold, 
hard men — cold even to cruelty, hard even before 
want and woe. And the Platonist, purest of all, 
only dreamed of virtue, and, with a high ideal 
before him, was practically a cypher! 

Now, go back eighteen hundred years and start 
with Christ's gospel, as it enters on its historic path. 
It enthrones and enshrines itself in a few humble, 
unlearned men, and their lives burn with its beauty 
and end with voluntary martyrdom. Follow the 
gospel of Christ as it marches down the centuries, 
and w^hat do you see? Hard hearts, cruel with 
crime, that no human love could soften, no hu- 
man power impress, are broken into contrition 
and love. Weak women, timid and trembling, 
are fortified by it to dare the scourge, the rack, 
the stake, the cross, or face without fear the fierce 
Numidian lion in the arena. Millionsof martyrs, 
under no compulsion but the sweet constraint of 
love, welcome the agonies of torture, and from 
all the grades of society come up to the coliseum 
and soak its sands with their blood, rather than 
utter one word to disown or dishonor Him whom, 
not having seen, they love. 

The world can furnish no parallel to this! Men 
have died for a principle, and that principle an 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 311 

error; for a religious faith, and that faith a 
falsehood; but self-sacrifice so perfect, so pure 
and so repeated, is peculiar to the followers of 
Christ, and it has challenged the wonder and ap- 
plause even of the enemies of Christ! 

The teaching of Christ has been for eighteen 
centuries the leaven and the lever of society — the 
leaven to pervade, the lever to uplift. At first a 
handful of disciples in the humble homes of Pal- 
estine; then that handful flung by persecution 
broadcast over the surrounding countries, till from 
Jerusalem the gospel spread to Antioch and Rome 
and Alexandria and Constantinople. The cross 
of a crucified criminal at Calvary is the nucleus of 
a world's illumination and reformation ! The fame 
of gospel triumphs spread beyond the fields of 
conflict, and as the lines of influence lengthened, 
and their circles reached round new centers of 
power and wickedness, in fear men cried out, *'It 
is turning the world upside down!" 

The little army of Jesus, with no badges or 
banners, no weapon but truth and no force but 
persuasion, in the face of fearful persecutions, 
grew mightier year by year. The blood of the 
martyrs was the seed of new churches; it fell like 
fertilizing dew on a barren soil. Met with vio- 
lence, the followers of Christ used no violence; 
though they kept silence with respect to social 
sins and vices which had taken the form of in- 
stitutions, yet they did not tolerate evils with 
which they forbore. The gospel overcame evil 
with good. First making the man anew, through 
each follower it reached out to grapple with cor- 
rupt society. Gathering strength, like volcanic 
fires beneath the surface, it heaved social life like 



312 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

an earthquake, bringing to the dust its palaces of 
iniquity in high places, and its thrones of regal 
wrong. Without a loud denunciation of pagan 
usages, it has gone nowhere except to march over 
ruins of those nine social evils, polygamy, infanti- 
cide, legaHzed prostitution, capricious divorce, 
bloody and brutal games, death and punishment 
by torture, unjust wars, caste and slavery. The 
pure heart and true conscience of believers were 
the channels through which Christ undertook to 
overturn existing wrong. And yet inark the re- 
sults. Some of these evils ceased to be common 
practices and became secret sins; some disap- 
peared entirely; some were borne with, as doomed 
and decaying; and to this day, wherever Christ, 
the divine Teacher, goes by his gospel, in propor- 
tion as that prevails, these corrupt social usages 
shrink like owls of the night before the growing 
glory of the day-dawn. 

M. Guizot says that he himself was a ration- 
alist in religion until he undertook the preparation 
for the press of an edition of Gibbon. The inves- 
tigation necessary to prepare notes for the edition 
led him to accept Christianity as a system that 
could not be explained by purely human forces. 

Look at English history! About fifty years 
before Christ's birth, Julius Caesar landed at Deal 
only to meet a brood of barbarians living in huts, 
and half hiding in skins their painted bodies. 
About 600 years afterward Christianity's golden 
prow touched the sands of Britain's island beach. 
And after twelve centuries of conflict and con- 
quest, we see a grand Christian nation, with scarce 
a remnant of pagan social sins, empress of the 
seas, mistress of the world, with a band of empire 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 313 

reaching round the globe, Christianizing India 
and civiHzing the inexpressible Turk; in the wake 
of her vessels and the very path of her armies 
carrying a blessing to the nations! 

Four hundred years have not passed since this 
continent was thrown open to civilization; yet to- 
day sixty millions of freemen are here gathered; 
from hill and vale Christian churches lift their 
spires. The gospel of Christ set foot on New 
England shores and took up its march across the 
continent, and where in its track do you find these 
nine social evils? Polygamy hides in a corner, 
farthest removed from the New England that cra- 
dled our American Protestantism; infanticide ev- 
eryw^here a concealed crime; legalized prostitu- 
tion almost unknown; capricious divorce encour- 
aged, for the most part, only in irreligious com- 
munities; bloody and brutal games to be seen only 
in subterranean holes; death and punishment by 
torture a relic of antiquity only — we never saw a 
rack, a cross, a hurdle; cruel wars, all wars, giv- 
ing place to peaceful arbitration; caste unrecog- 
nized, and even slavery now no more existing 
among us. 

For nearly a century the State and the Church 
seemed half asleep to the fact that human bond- 
age cursed our land; but God, in the late civil 
conflict, which was the fruit of slavery, marshaled 
the forces of our nation against this the last of our 
great national wrongs — this relic of a barbarous 
and pagan past! 

Christ's words are not only vital but vitalizing. 
We are prone to think there is little power in 
words without a voice, the magnetism of the man 
behind the speech. We think the world must be 



314 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

roused as Luther woke Germany, by the trumpet 
tongue. But the tongue that taught on Judean 
hills has been silent now for fifty generations, and 
still the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto 
salvation to every one that believeth. You read 
these words, and there is life in them — a soul in 
them speaks to your soul. You read the words 
of men, and you feel in rare cases that you are 
communing with master minds — you read Christ's, 
and you feel the thrill of the life of God. 

Account for this inspiration if you can on any 
human theory! Who was it solved these prob- 
lems of the race, brought life and immortality to 
light, taught man his origin, nature, interest and 
destiny! Who was he who reformed the soul and 
transformed society — who by his simple gospel 
still marches through the centuries with the tread 
and trophies of a conscious conqueror! Whose 
words are these that break hard hearts and yet 
heal broken hearts, that subdue the strong but 
nerve the weak, and to-day are turning the world 
upside down! Yes, mere words, with no mag- 
netic voice to lend them power, no personal pres- 
ence, yet before them vice and wrong, error in 
doctrine and evil in practice, tremble and totter 
and fall as before an earthquake. 

Once again, what think you of Christ? Con- 
sider the teaching- of Him who spake as never 
man spake. Surely the author of the Cosmos 
and of the Logos must be one and the same: for 
in both the Works of Creation and the Written 
Word we find the same inherent symmetry and 
beauty, grandeur and glory: the same marks of 
the infinite mind! 

Full weight has never been given to the ex- 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 315 

perimental proof, the witness of those who have 
subjected the gospel of Christ to that most de- 
cisive and conclusive of all tests, a personal trial. 
Somehow the teachings of Christ have found 
their way into the actual life of the world, to an 
extent wholly unequalled by those of any other 
person. The whole fabric of society is interwoven 
with them: they give shape to our laws and lives, 
our habits and customs, our ideas and ideals, our 
feeHngs and our faith. Our literature is so af- 
fected by Christ's teachings that one-half of it 
revolves about the cross, and two-thirds of it is 
permeated or modified by the influence of Chris- 
tianity. 

Henry Rogers supposed that suddenly and 
miraculously, on some given night, every verse 
and line of Holy Scripture should be blotted or 
bleached out of human literature, so that every 
copy of the word of God should become a blank 
book, and every quotation from it or paraphrase 
of it, wherever found, should disappear — and it 
was astonishing to find how vast the number of 
books that would be rendered worthless! Our 
poetry, history, oratory, philosophy, science, are 
all inseparably linked with the truths which Christ 
taught. 

This supposition of Mr. Rogers suggests the 
kindred question which stirred Sir David Dalrym- 
ple to a strange task. At a Scotch dinner where 
he w^as present, the inquiry was raised whether if 
all copies of the New Testament had been burned 
before the end of the third century their contents 
could have been recovered from the writings of 
the first three centuries. Dalrymple's antiquarian 
mind naturally took up such a task, and in course 



316 MANY INFALLIBLE PROOFS. 

of two months he found and indexed in the writ- 
ings of the first three hundred years nearly every 
verse of the New Testament; and he was satisfied 
that a new search would discover the rest. 

Julian the apostate, and other foes of our faith 
who tried to burn out from human history all 
marks of Christianity, tried in vain. God had 
wrapped the very language of this divine teacher 
about the thoughts and hearts of men, as the del- 
icate nerves wrap round our veins and arteries; 
and human literature must be destroyed in order 
to destroy the Bible — yes, human society must 
fall into ruins, and human history be blotted out, 
before Christ and Christianity could be withdrawn 
from this world. To this grand fact it behooves 
us to give heed. There must be some divine es- 
sence, where you find divine attributes. Here is 
a gospel first taught by a Nazarene, of thirty 
years; and it has proved itself practically omni- 
scient, revealing even the thoughts of the heart, 
practically omnipresent, manifesting its presence 
everywhere, and practically omnipotent, turning 
the world upside down. For every effect science 
and philosophy unite to demand a cause, an 
efficient and sufficient cause. And for this ef- 
fect there is but one cause that is sufficient, viz: 
a divine force must be hidden in this gospel: the 
secret of its energy is both mysterious and mirac- 
ulous, and God is in it. Volcanic heavings must 
be explained by volcanic fires, mountain waves 
must be traced to those mighty winds that sweep 
across great seas; the lightning's bolt that shivers 
and shatters the very pyramids, tells of electric 
batteries so vast that they can be formed only by 
masses of cloud that cover the whole sky. And 



POWER OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 317 

when you see a gospel like this of Jesus, heaving 
the very world, moving the great souls of society, 
shattering the giant monuments of superstition 
and ancient error, you must look for the deep 
fires, the mighty breathings, the celestial energies 
of God. Some of us know that in the teaching 
of Jesus all these are to be found and felt, for we 
have found and felt them. To the proud, self- 
righteous pharisee it may still be a stumbling 
block; to the wise and self-sufficient scientist it 
may still be foolishness; but in the face of a scorn 
like that of the Jew and a sneer like that of the 
Greek, we are not ashamed of the gospel of 
Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation. 



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